John & Anne Wiley

2011/09/04

Flying Monkey Face

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,Smiley Adventure — John @ 04:57

The day we flew from Ashland to Smiley Creek was also beautiful, though there was haze from distant fires. The first really striking scene was Crater Lake, even with haze and scattered clouds. Some day maybe we’ll climb to the altitude required to fly over the top, but even so it was beautiful. Here’s a different angle from the one I posted a few weeks ago just after the flight.

3770 Crater Lake & Distant Peaks

3770 Crater Lake & Distant Peaks

There are some great peaks in the distance, and one of the nearer ones is especially craggy.

3788 Small Craggy Peak

3788 Small Craggy Peak

It’s not all that far (by plane) from Mt. Hood, which also has a craggy top probably related to the type of rock along with similar volcanic and glacial forces shaping it. Nearer are the Three Sisters and their extended family of smaller relations. I guess that’s Hood and maybe Adams in the distance.

3804 Sisters & Family

3804 Sisters & Family

A little further along in the Deschutes area the rapids were awash with kayaks, rafts, and a few boats like this one that’s probably resting up from a run. Hope that blue life ring wasn’t needed.

3825 Rapid Runners

3825 Rapid Runners

In case you’re wondering about the title of this post, it has to do with this last pic of today. For reasons I don’t understand, this apparently volcanic cone has a feature that reminds me of the faces on those scary flying monkeys from the old Wizard of Oz flick. So you see it, tilted to the right?

3810 Flying Monkey Face

3810 Flying Monkey Face

2011/09/02

First Summit

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,Smiley Adventure — John @ 09:07

This trip is the first time we’ve gone anywhere near Mount Shasta because usually there are clouds and/or dangerous winds there. When it was clear and winds were light as we approached it this time, we decided to delicately feel our way closer and higher to see if the winds were different at the top. It was almost flat calm by the time we cautiously circled the summit and got close enough for this pic.

3590 Shasta Summit

3590 Shasta Summit

It shows the zigzag trail up from the left, and my impression was that the highest point is the last rock outcrop at the right. Though it seems bleak in this pic, it was quite stunningly beautiful in context and somewhat breathtaking as we imagined this could also be the high point in our trip. It wasn’t, as you know if you’ve read all my posts about this Smiley Adventure. Still, this was another major contribution to what was an overwhelmingly magnificent day that began in San Jose and included Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Unbelievable.

Our next major attraction that day was the rock outcrop named Pilot Rock that I’ve called Cowboy Hat Rock because of how it looks from over I-5. Here on the other side up close it offers fascinating details and color variations.

3633 Cowboy Rock

3633 Cowboy Rock

The final major thrill on this flight was circling down over Ashland and seeing people filling up the open air theater for a performance.

3648 Downtown Ashland

3648 Downtown Ashland

It’s the horseshoe-shaped building, and the stage is that Tudor style “house” facing it. The angled row of buildings bottom-right is a quaint shopping and cafe area where we had coffee the next morning overlooking the river behind the buildings. Magical times!

2011/09/01

Lake to Peak

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,Smiley Adventure — John @ 08:30

Continuing my look back at our trip, still on the same day we flew from San Jose to Watsonville and up the coast across SF Bay, more remarkable scenes to share. We stopped briefly at Clear Lake, and taking off the shore was artwork to me. Tall grass laid down by wind and other influences, and many shades of green mingled into a collage of lake life.

3395 Lakeshore Life

3395 Lakeshore Life

Flying up the valley along Hwy.101 there was artwork on this slope amid a vast forest. The lines and colors complement each other in some ways I find appealing.

3433 Agro Mosaic

3433 Agro Mosaic

I guess at least some of this is vineyards, but maybe it’s one of those epic artworks like when they draped vast swaths of hills in fabric. Tomorrow we might complete the review of this one enchanted day, but for now I’ll end with our approach to the symmetry of Shasta offset by the jagged foreground ridge.

3482 Shasta Return

3482 Shasta Return

2011/08/31

Bay View

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,Smiley Adventure — John @ 07:53

I often wish pix could really show what we see when flying, and our relatively low altitude flight along the San Francisco Bay is a prime example. To me this is a magnificent photo.

3307 Downtown SF

3307 Downtown SF

But the camera sees haze more than the eye, and to me that detracts considerably from how it actually looked that day. The angle of light affects pix a lot too, as you can see in this similar scene from the other side after we’d passed the city center.

3316 Past SF

3316 Past SF

Less than two minutes apart, but notably different in the light and color captured. Then keep in mind that we were basically seeing both of these scenes at the same time, plus the rest of a vast field of view. The end result is simply magnificent beyond the ability of pix or words to convey. Yet I keep trying, eh? 🙂

Moments later I snapped this view back across the Bay and the fog, at the city about to vanish behind the fluffy white blanket.

3335 Hidden City

3335 Hidden City

Sausalito was playing a similar game of hide and seed with the fickle fingers of fog, and we passed slowly to admire the many rows of houseboats.

3339 Sleepy Sausalito

3339 Sleepy Sausalito

Something about the fog and the fact we were looking at the houseboats more than on our few prior flights here, gave it all a sleepy look. As if the whole town were about to pull that blanket over itself for a deep slumber.

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…

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