It was another magnificent day here in paradise (aka Santa Barbara), so we went flying with our visitor who’s here from Grants Pass. So beautiful!
2069 Goleta Beach
From this moment after takeoff, and every moment until we landed again, the views were simply spectacular. Another visitor from out of town recently asked what’s the worst thing about living here. The honest answer was easy, “Leaving.”
2078 Butterfly Beach
Back on 6/23 I had reached the FL Keys in the series reviewing pix from our Islander Adventure. But if you’re among those who follow this blog, you may have been wondering why it’s taken so long for me to post again. Well, sometimes Life gets in the way of Art. But this time lack of internet was a big factor too. We just spent a week at Cabo San Lucas as I’ll share in coming posts, but before that we enjoyed another SB Solstice Playful People’s Parade.
0678 Solstice Memories
We cherish memories from every annual parade since moving here 19 years ago, and the little girl at the right will probably have fond memories of the fuzzy float above. Looking the other way, up State, the merriment continues on to the parade’s turn toward the park with color and creativity everywhere.
0671 Creativity Alive
In the park where everyone congregates after the parade, quieter accents magically mingle from the stately old park to join exhuberant music and dancing amid the parked floats next to art with food and crafts for sale.
0711 Wider Spectrum
Two days later we found a similar creativity at Venice Beach after (gasp!) driving there to catch our LAX commercial flight to Cabo the next morning.
1141 Venice Variety
Wish we’d stayed with Plan A and flown to Cabo in Tripp, but the flight was still beautiful and Alaska Airlines seems to keep their windows much cleaner than other airlines we’ve flown.
0790 Cabo Approach
I had fun following along on Avare and got some fuzzy high altitude pix of places we might stop if we ever do take Tripp there. It’s a complex topic with many factors, but we’re still open to the notion of flying Baja in Spring when it’s cooler and greener. But this trip was for the wedding of our precious niece, and we didn’t want to take any chance of missing it due to weather. Turned out it would’ve been made difficult by those clouds from a distant hurricane. Arriving at the hotel we enjoyed a family beach volleyball game.
0809 Hurricane Volleyball
The winds were gentle, but those big waves got even bigger, eventually covering this beach and washing clear into the swimming pool behind me. Anyway, before getting back to the Islander Adventure review I’ll share more of Cabo in the next post.
There’s no place like home.
8587 Sweet SB!
The mountains, ocean, greenery, and most of all the delicious gentle air that caresses your entire being. Oh, we’ve traveled far and enjoyed so many wonderful people, places and things. But none can compare for us, to our little home tenderly embraced by the Pacific. It’s almost impossible to believe that we woke in Flagstaff and made the short flight to the Grand Canyon this morning.
8432 Grand Canyon SE
Because I didn’t have the narrow main canyon corridor programmed in any of the three GPS units I use, I didn’t want to chance navigating it using only the paper chart. By entering the Southeast corner of the restricted area at 10,500 feet, I would be above the minimum 10,000 all the way to the western exit near the airport. But the air was especially turbulent over the canyon, making it challenging to hold altitude and all but impossible to find the landmarks to visually navigate the exit corridor. I haven’t looked at all the distant views we snapped of the main canyon yet, but the corner we did fly over was still remarkable as you can see here.
8424 Grand Canyon SE
There was haze both from distant fires and the humid air from surrounding rain squalls, so it’s likely the photos won’t begin to match how our eyes took in this vista. Since it’s only a few hours from home, chances are good that we’ll go back and try again sometime soon. In coming days I’ll share more pix as we review them all. For now, it’s delicious to be Here. Comfy in our home with our familiar stuff, and tonight a deep sleep in a cozy bed with nothing that interferes with sleeping until we wake refreshed from dreams of our Islander Adventure. 🙂
We’re especially enjoying Our Town recently. As we get Tripp ready for our Islander Adventure, we’ve taken brief flights to check out little things we’re going to use for the journey. Mostly though it’s a sort of Farewell to Santa Barbara for a time. We’re really missing Home already, as our departure fast approaches. So for me this pic is a bit melancholy as we cherish this place and everyone here whom we love.
4988 Missing U
We’re already missing that sunset over the University, the skies and mountains, greens and browns, and all the fun things going on down there. Sweet young Sarah knew we were going on this short flight and to my surprise I could see her come out to wave, so far below.
4985 Farewell
The white picket fence between us frames for me a warm farewell, and the essence of leaving Home.
We’re ramping up. The dreams and schemes going into our Islander Adventure are pretty intense. So much to learn, plan, get, and do before we take off! Looking at this pic of Goleta Beach just now made me realize the Caribbean is going to look similar.
4742 Bahamaesque
Both have beautiful beaches, ocean, boating, fishing, diving, swimming, and lots of blue. The sky here is often similar to pix I’ve seen of the Caribbean. But the ocean, not so much. Here it’s a deeper blue that’s more serene somehow, and there it’s brilliant and a lot warmer for water sports.
So today I’ve invested quite a bit of time figuring out the maximum distances we’ll be flying over water.
Water Crossings
If you’re interested, you’ll probably need to click for the larger version to make any sense of this. In essence, it turns out the first water crossing from West Palm Beach to Grand Bahama Island (about half an hour) matches the one between Great Inagua and the little island just off Haiti.
Many (most?) pilots don’t worry about long water crossings, even in single-engine planes like Tripp. Lucky Lindy is oft quoted saying two engines just give you twice the chance of something going wrong. That’s fine, but more important to me are two things:
1)Engines have become vastly more reliable since Lindy’s adventure, and Tripp’s Lycoming 0360 is among the very best. Engine troubles of any sort on planes like Tripp are very rare. But the only sort of engine trouble I’d concerned about on a long water crossing is sudden and severe power loss, and that is much more rare still. Almost unheard of. Still, I do all possible to minimize that tiny chance.
2)I fly high. No, not in that sense, silly! Planes like Tripp glide quite well, serenely going about 1.5 miles per 1,000 feet of altitude. So unlike the innumerable pilots I see taking off from SBA toward Catalina past that scene of Goleta Beach (above) staying low as they head out over the water, I climb to always be within gliding range of land. Tripp is quite safe for going into water (for us that is – Tripp would probably eventually sink and become a fish refuge), so the concern is about being far from shore. Anyway, on those two long Caribbean crossings we’ll be beyond glide to shore for about six minutes. So even if the fickle finger of fate were to choose that moment to touch our trusty powerplant, we’d land near shore.
Now maybe you’ve never thought about this (or don’t want to!), but for me it’s a big part of contemplating a Big Adventure that includes big water crossings. If we do go beyond the Bahamas, it will be a small factor in our decision along with all the international ramifications of passing near Cuba and Haiti, possibly stopping in Dominican Republic, and visiting Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands.
John & Anne Wiley 
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