Here are the last pix from our first day of flying, from Santa Barbara to Grants Pass, OR. I’ll start off with this intriguing look at the interaction of farming and nature somewhere a few miles East of Chico, CA. I just love the leopard texture and the variations in color.
1602 Leopard Landscape
Like nearly all the pix from this day, I’ve tweaked the colors to eliminate what I can of the smoke that made even nearly straight down pix like this hazy to the camera. Since I can’t quite forget how smoky it was, here’s another smoke source. Adding to the wildfires that made the distant mountains in the bottom half of the pic below hazy even above 7,000′ where we probably were when snapping this next pic, there was smoke from ground level up to 1,000′ or so from agricultural burning like this burn in the top half and you can see it clinging to the ground in the bottom half. It’s somewhat amazing to me that people can live down there breathing that stuff for extended periods.
1573-71 Double Whammy
We were happy to be above most of it, and still able to enjoy scenes like this cartoon figure etched in a flooded (rice?) field.
1577 Simpsons or Schultz?
Before long we were even higher to clear the mountains dotted with alpine lakes like this approaching Scott Valley.
1636 Alpine Lake
Crossing into Oregon we could see the distant Cleveland Ridge Fire beyond Medford adding to the much thicker smoke coming from the Gap Fire back across the CA state line in Klamath Forest.
1879 Cleveland Ridge Fire
As we began descending toward Grants Pass, we got this good look at Applegate Lake.
1889 Applegate Lake
Like the iconic Lake Shasta and other water resources North of the SF Bay Area, this one has gained from more normal rainfall last Winter. We’ll share more and better pix of those waters when we get to the return flight in coming posts.
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