John & Anne Wiley

2010/09/09

Endless Spring

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:50

Santa Barbarians are a bit grumpy lately. The weather has been cooler than usual, with much more low cloud and fog – especially along the coast. We waited for it to clear Saturday afternoon, and got this sunset shot from just offshore of the airport looking northeast.

1040 Goleta Pier

1040 Goleta Pier

Even on this “good” day it was much cooler than normal, and there was still fog trying to pour over the islands. Today it succeeded and sunset saw clouds surrounding our mountain tops. Even so the clouds offered soft pastel colors to accent an orange tree thick with juicy fruit.

1046 Cloud Cap

1046 Cloud Cap

I’m glad we’ve had our Summer experiences elsewhere this year on our NxNW Adventure. Some of the hot and humid weather on the trip made us appreciate the unusual fog and clouds here, and we’ve flown out from under it a few times to get some hot sun just a few minutes’ ride beyond the mountains. I hope this long stretch of Spring weather patterns doesn’t portend a wet Winter. I wonder how the weather will be when we take off for our MerriTimes Adventure. We’re starting to talk about dates now, and in a few days we’ll look at forecasts and make a plan.

2010/08/26

Merry MariTimes?

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,MeriTimes Adventure,Random — John @ 09:30

Well, tonight we started talking about another trip! It’s remarkable given that we’ve been mostly holed up, haven’t even done any of the short regional or SoCA flights we’d imagined, and haven’t completely unpacked from NxNW. On the other hand, it’s very handy having lots of stuff from the trip still piled together where we can use it as a starting point for a hopefully much lighter load for the next big trip. Will this be it?

When I lived in Canada for a few years everyone seemed to always be talking about The Maritimes. That’s the eastern part of Canada, and having lived only on the west coast for a while it seemed far off, exotic and a bit romantic – especially after adding years of hearing about that region since. I’ve seen a few intriguing articles about it recently, including one in an aviation mag. We also want to visit the two remaining continental states we’ve missed: AR & CO. We’re also itching to spend more time in NYC and DC, and would like a return to FL with lots of other ideas along the way.
Tonight we sketched out a potential vision of mostly “fly-camping,” with the nights numbered and increasingly “flexible” as the list progresses:
1 GRAND CANYON
2 CO (probably through Denver)
3 NB (Omaha) or Iowa
4 & 5 Chicago (hotel?)
Dayton, OH?
6 London, ON
7 Ottawa, ON
8 Montreal  (hotel?)
9 Quebec City
10 New Brunswick
11 & 12 Newfoundland?
13 Prince Edward Island
14 Nova Scotia
~~~
15 & 16 MAINE  Bar Harbor & other areas?
17 & 18 Boston – Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard?
19 New Haven
20-22 NYC (NJ?)
23 Philadelphia
24 & 25 Pittsburg – Dayton?
26-28 DC
…..
WV, KT, TN, MS, AR, AL, GA, FL (incl. Keys & Bahamas)??
Home via??
Help us! As you can see, the flexibility gets really squishy by the time we leave DC. We could be home in a day or two direct, or meander for weeks. Weather, exhaustion, mood, and perhaps most of all money would all be factors. So tonight we begin to dream about it.
Any comments, suggestions, ideas??
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