John & Anne Wiley

2011/09/26

Home Town Colors

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 03:18

We’ve had a few short flights around town, and the colors just seem to keep getting brighter for us. Thursday we wandered over toward Summerland, and enjoyed the San Roque Bridge over Stevens Park anew. That’s the one we love to drive across, looking both ways and then voting. Most often the mountain view wins, but sometimes the coast and islands are just stunning. From up here, the bridge itself adds a lot to the mountain view.

6152 San Roque (Stevens Park) Bridge

6152 San Roque (Stevens Park) Bridge

From a quarter mile up, the other view is also quite often stellar and it’s always delightful to take in the two views simultaneously from our magic carpet Tripp.

6169 Beach & Harbor

6169 Beach & Harbor

Santa Barbara’s beach and harbor are a constant source of joy for us, including the chance to mingle with tourists from around the world. In front of the mission, the rose garden is yet another favorite spot.

6154 Rose Garden

6154 Rose Garden

Before pruning sometimes the flowers are so bountiful they pop even from this far away. Strolling among them during pruning the fragrance is strong as wheelbarrows overflow with ripe blossoms. The color variations on the large lawn tell of activities like picnics, parties, weddings, frisbee, and touch football.

I also enjoy checking up on several long-term projects around town like these new bridges on Hwy.101 at the Milpas offramp. It looks like some colorful graffiti has been painted out on the bridge abutments, and I’m eager to see what blossoms at this intersection once the work is complete and people begin walking and biking more here.

6161 Milpas 101 Overpasses

6161 Milpas 101 Overpasses

2011/08/29

Santa Cruz

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region,Smiley Adventure — John @ 23:23

The second day of our Smiley Adventure, we stopped for fuel in Watsonville after the short hop from San Jose. Since we have hundreds of great pix from this trip, I’m posting some different ones to my Edhat & Photo Pages (see links at the right). Even so, I’m going to break up the Day 2 batch. Here then are two from Santa Cruz area, starting with the Boardwalk where I once spent some play time as a kid.

3191 Santa Cruz Boardwalk

3191 Santa Cruz Boardwalk

If you click to see the largest version here, you can make out the water slide at right and what I think is the “Mad Mouse” ride. That ride was a mini-roller coaster in the ’60s, and a lot of fun. At the left end is what was the arcade, with a cotton candy booth outside. The rides and other attractions are probably quite different now, but the basic structure looks about the same. Among dozens of pix of everything from San Jose to almost Half Moon Bay, I’ve chosen a few favs for the other two sites but here’s one more for this blog. A few of the areas just past Santa Cruz with sea caves also have rocks like this. I didn’t notice until reviewing pix just now that there seems to be a gal posing for a photo after having climbed out to a cave in the rock.

3246 Precarious Pose

3246 Precarious Pose

You can click on this pic for more detail and look on the Photo Page for a larger pic with context. I wonder how their pix came out, and whether they took any of us flying past offshore. That mental game of looking at a scene from both ends (plane and cave) kinda takes me back to having roamed these spots when I was the age these kids seem to be. I can feel the Wheel Of Life turning…

Refly

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region,Smiley Adventure — John @ 01:45

We haven’t been outside yet today! Slept a lot (with remarkable dreams) and now we’re off to do some errands. First tho, I’ll post a few more pix from the first day of our Smiley Adventure to begin a “re-fly” of the trip now that we have time to add more words & pix. First is a long shot of the Hearst Castle, showing the crag beyond.

3067 Hearst Castle

3067 Hearst Castle

Next another snap of the Big Sur coast. This rock we never noticed during our many driving trips along that magnificent road, looks to me like the core of an ancient volcano. I like how it’s split into a sculpture shape by the forces of time.

3096 Rock Heart

3096 Rock Heart

As we neared Monterey the cloudy halo atop a hill caught fire in the sun.

0572 Fire Crown

0572 Fire Crown

2011/08/16

First Leg

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region,Smiley Adventure,Tripp — John @ 07:15

Today we left later than hoped, because Tripp needed some TLC. We’d had her nose strut rebuilt a couple of weeks ago, so of course today it was flat when we arrived at the airport to get an early afternoon start on our first leg of the trip up the coast. So by the time we’d had it fixed, we raced sunset and arrived just as the colors were fading and the lights started to twinkle. Oceano looked so wrinkly in the evening light, as shadows began to advance across the dunes.

3038 High Over Oceano

3038 High Over Oceano

We were flying higher and faster than usual to arrive before dark, and get a better look at Big Sur on the way. Morro Bay was lovely with a scatter of soft clouds mingling with the “sister” rocks toward SLO in the distance.

3053 Morro & Sisters

3053 Morro & Sisters

We got a good look at Hearst Castle, though the sun was too low to light up the brilliant aqua blue Grecian pool.

3084 Heast Castle Evening

3084 Heast Castle Evening

One of our fav stops when driving Big Sur is the Julia Pfeiffer Burns park, where you can walk under the highway for a great view of surf surging through sea caves and the long waterfall onto the deserted beach.

3138 Julia Pfeiffer Burns

3138 Julia Pfeiffer Burns

As we passed Nepenthe low clouds were gathering closer to shore and the light was fading, so we climbed direct to San Jose and got this shot of Monterey being overtaken by the fluffy blanket.

3153 Monterey Blanket

3153 Monterey Blanket

Nearby the coast from Pajaro Dunes to Santa Cruz was still clear just as the sun slid into the muck offshore.

3156 Santa Cruz Sunset

3156 Santa Cruz Sunset

We arrived in San Jose just at the right time to have good visibility, but late enough for the flavor of night flight that we so enjoy.

3159 San Jose Twilight

3159 San Jose Twilight

I hope the weather permits more coastal flying tomorrow as we continue North!

2011/08/14

Shell Memories

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 01:05

One of my warm childhood memories is the moment during long family drives from the Bay Area to SoCA, when we came through the pass from SLO to catch first glimpse of Shell Beach. The dull brown interior hills and hot valleys suddenly gained a brilliant blue and green top as the breezy Pacific came into view.

2954 Memory Beach

2954 Memory Beach

So when we flew past these hotels near that spot, those memories mingled with new ones from our anniversary stay in one of the hotels. The rock spire between lanes on the freeway (top of pic) looked so much bigger as a kid than looking down on it now, and the brilliant white bluffs tell of ancient marine life. Along with some wide sandy beaches the whole shoreline is riddled with sea caves like these, and the nearby residential area has several places where you can climb down bluffs to explore.

2947 Secret Shore

2947 Secret Shore

Added to my memories of Shell Beach now, are more recent ones in the adjoining towns of Pismo, Grover, Arroyo “Dinky” and of course our new fav Oceano. As you can see in this next pic, there’s a nice park at the lagoon next to the airport.

2959 Oceano Airport

2959 Oceano Airport

A block or two beyond the bottom of the pic is the beach, and just off to the right is the beginning of the vast dunes. It’s such a delight to fly around this beautiful area, land there and stroll to one of the cafes or Mama’s Italian restaurant, wander the dunes, wade the beach, and explore at whim until we find ourselves back at the airport. There we might chat with the owner of that yellow biplane parked next to the white hangar in the middle of the pic (click to see it on the full-size pic). Maybe meet other people who’ve flown in, talk to those waiting for a skydiving jump, or the ultralight flyers who sometimes fly there. Then we take off and often fly around the area again before heading past this lagoon along the beach to look at the crowds enjoying the all terrain vehicle area of the dunes, and the large nature preserve in the dunes beyond.

2962 Dune Lagoon

2962 Dune Lagoon

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