Missing Grandma at Muir Woods

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Funny what you think about when you’re wandering among the giant trees.

I went to Muir Woods on Saturday, on my way home from whale watching. It was my third or fourth visit ever.

Muir Woods National Monument is a valley just north of San Francisco that’s filled with groves of giant redwood trees along a small creek. It features a boardwalk and paved pathway, several other trails, and signage to help you understand the ecology and history of the woods.

All the other times I’ve been there have been late in the day when the place was mostly deserted. On Saturday, I arrived at 5 PM and although the place was definitely emptying out, it was pretty obvious that it had been packed earlier in the day; there were cars parked along the road for at least two miles leading up to the park entrance with so many people walking back to them that I thought the cars were for some big party at Muir Beach.

In Muir Woods
It was dark down at the base of the tall trees.

Along the creek
There wasn’t much water in Redwood Creek, but it was picturesque, anyway.

Because of the time of day and the angle of the sun and the park geography, the pathways were in dark shadows. But if you looked up toward the tops of the giant trees, you’d see the sun still shining on them. Still, I didn’t take many pictures. Instead, I just walked along the pathways along the creek at my own pace, thinking about what I was seeing and trying to tune out the noise of the tourists all around me.

I remembered my first visit to Muir Woods, years before in January. Back in the 1990s, I was a regular speaker at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I’d fly out for a few days — usually with my future wasband — see the show, do my speaking thing, and then spend some time in the area. Airfare and hotel costs in the city were a write-off as a business expense. The vacation tacked on afterward was just fun. One year we visited Napa Valley, another year we visited Sonoma Valley, another year we went south to Monterrey and St. Louis Obispo, and another year we headed to Hawaii. Those were great trips in days long gone.

I don’t remember which year we first went to Muir Woods. But I do remember the quiet of the woods and seeing two salmon heading up stream to spawn in water that was barely deep enough to cover them. One male, one female, several hundred feet apart, struggling to move upstream. I wanted so badly to just grab one of them and put it with the other one in the same pool of water so they could go about their business and die.

I don’t remember the park being very crowded or noisy. I just remembered it being dark and kind of hushed.

It was dark on Saturday, but definitely not hushed.

Even when signs asked visitors to “Enter Quietly” — as they do upon entry to the Cathedral Grove — people called back and forth to each other and kids screamed and cried. I could have been at the mall.

I tried hard to tune it all out, focusing on the tall, straight trees. And when I made a turn down a pathway and found myself in a little cul-de-sac with a bench before a huge tree, I found myself thinking about my grandmother.

Born in 1912 as one of eight children, my grandmother was a hardworking woman who never experienced much outside the world of her home in the New York Metro area. In the 1980s, when I had a job that required a lot of business travel, and then later, when I traveled with my future wasband, I’d send her a postcard from everyplace I went. That and television were he exposures to the rest of the country. When she died in 2002, we found a shoebox with all those postcards inside it. She’d kept every single one.

I found myself thinking about the last time I’d gone hiking with her. She was in her late 70s at the time and still very active, working part-time as a hostess in a family restaurant. I’d taken her to the State Line Lookout in Palisades Interstate Parkway and we’d walked one of the trails through the woods. I’d been worried about her when I realized how steep the trail was in parts, but I didn’t need to. At one point, I saw her stabbing a branch she’d picked up as a walking stick into a hole alongside the trail. When I asked her what she was doing, she told he she’d seen a snake go in the hole. Someone else’s grandmother (or mother or girlfriend, for that matter) might have screamed and run the other way. But not my grandmother. She was tough.

As I stood in the clearing at the base of the tree, I realized that the path through the woods was made so that everyone could enjoy the wonder of the trees, no matter how old or young they were. I found myself wishing that I could have brought my grandmother there. I could imagine her awe as she looked up and realized just how tall that tree was. Or when she looked at the base of the tree and realized just how big the trunk was.

“For crimsey’s sake!” she’d say. None of us knew where that came from but we knew that when she said it, it meant she was impressed. It was like me saying “Holy cow!” (or “Holy shit!”)

I wished I could shown her the big trees. Or the Grand Canyon. Or the view from my helicopter on a flight along the Pacific Coast. Or even the giant cactus that grew in my yard in Arizona or the amazing view from my homesite in Washington. The incredible but normal things beyond her limited range of travel and experience.

The things we take for granted as we make our way through life. The things we don’t miss if we never see them at all.

I miss you, Grandma.

Whale Watching at Point Reyes

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And so much more.

I went whale watching yesterday. At least that was the excuse I used to make the two-hour drive to Point Reyes National Seashore. The motivation to get out there by 9:30 AM was provided by the Sacramento Paddle Pushers, a Meetup.com group that had suggested the trip. (I’d gone on a 9-mile paddling trip with the SPP a few weeks before; they’re really active and do a lot more than paddling. Thought I’d blogged about it, but I guess not!)

I didn’t carpool with the group. Although I like the idea of carpooling — saving gas, companionship for a drive, etc. — I don’t like the idea of being tied to another person who I may or may not know very well. I like the freedom to make things up as I go along. And I absolutely detest waiting for other people to get organized or to give the green light for setting out on the next part of a drive. So I didn’t carpool. I drove out on my own, with Penny beside me and Google providing turn-by-turn driving instructions.

It was dark when I left at 6:30 AM. I not only wanted to get there on time, but I wanted the freedom to stop wherever I wanted to along the way. I headed westbound on I-80 as it got lighter and lighter and foggier and foggier. By the time I’d exited at Route 37, the fog was thick — so thick that I had to slow down going through the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Then it lifted just enough to make normal speed possible and I continued on my way.

The route Google chose took me through some residential areas before sending me toward the coast on Novado Boulevard. There were cows grazing on lush green hills along the way. The road wound up and down and around, past small lakes as wisps of fog got caught up in trees and floated on lake surfaces. The early morning sun shined brightly above the marine layer, trying so hard to break through. I stopped at Stafford Lake Park to let Penny take a walk while I shot a few photos.

Stafford Lake
The scene at Stafford Lake Park yesterday morning.

Interesting Breakfast
Not sure how I wound up with a veggie breakfast, but it was good. It’s always nice to try something different.

Eventually, we wound up at Point Reyes Station. It was early — only 8:30 AM. I had a whole hour to go the last 16 miles, which Google said would take me 33 minutes. I decided to stop for breakfast. I wound up at the Station House Cafe, which was pretty much empty. (Heck, the whole town was empty at 8:30; it would be very different later on.) I sat at the counter and although my brain really wanted an omelet as good as the one I’d had in Winters the morning before, I went with something completely different: cheese grits and sauteed Swiss chard. As I told a Facebook friend later in the day, it was good, but bacon would have made it better.

Please don’t lecture me about leaving my dog in the car. First of all, I only do this when I’m certain that the temperature in the car won’t exceed a balmy 70° or 80°F or get below 40°F. On warm days, I always park in the shade if possible. And if I’m parked in town, I always leave the doors unlocked so anyone could simply open them up if there was a concern.

Penny has spent a lot of time in the car — whether it’s my Honda, Jeep, truck, or a rental car — and is quite accustomed to it. She usually just settles down and goes to sleep.

On that particular day, the high in the area was forecasted as 50°F and although there was no shade, I did leave both front windows down a good 4 inches. I locked the doors, but anyone with a long, skinny arm could have unlocked them.

I was back in the truck, finishing up my drive by 9:00 AM. The road wound through the tiny town of Inverness on Tomales Bay before cutting west across the peninsula into the park. I followed the signs and wound up in the nearly empty Drakes Beach parking lot. I took Penny out for another quick walk and moved the truck to a spot closer to the ranger station. Then I gathered my camera equipment together, made sure Penny was set with food and water, locked up the car, and went to find the others.

I brought all my good camera equipment with me that day: my Nikon D7000 and 3 lenses, including my 300 mm lens, which I thought might be good to capture images of the whales. I also had my Manfrotto monopod. Yes, I know a tripod would be better, but I detest using one in situations involving moving subject matter. My monopod gives me enough steadying on full-sun shoots.

And there was plenty of sun that day. The fog was mostly burned off, although there was a definite white haze in the air. I went to the building just as the ranger was unlocking it. There were a handful of people milling about, but no one I recognized. I didn’t think it worth querying people to see if they were with the group. Again, I was leery of tying myself to one or more people until I knew how the day would unfold.

Like most other people there, I paid $5 for a shuttle bus ticket. Then I went outside and followed the group to a nice charter coach that was being used to shuttle park visitors to two points of interest: the Point Reyes Lighthouse and a spot called Chimney Rock. The bus pulled away from the curb and the driver, a big man who obviously had a lot of passion about the park and his job, told us a little about the wildlife we were already seeing: black-tailed deer and Tule elk. He then put in a short CD that explained a little of the park’s history and told us about the dairy farms we were passing along the way.

We were making the final climb up the road toward the lighthouse, when the man in front of me and I saw the same thing out on the ocean to our left: a whale! We’d already made our first spotting.

At the bus stop, we all got out and headed up the hill toward the lighthouse. There were about 20 of us in this first trip of the day. I took my time, taking in the view of the surf on the beach stretching out to the north. This was my third trip to Point Reyes and this particular view has become iconic for me. No matter when I come — late afternoon, midday, or morning — the pounding surf seems to disappear into the far distance, perfectly illustrating one of the themes I like to capture in my photography: infinity.

Infinity Waves
It looks like this pattern of waves against the shore could go on forever, no?

I caught sight of movement over a small hill and moved farther up the trail to investigate. On the other side of a clump of trees, on the hillside sloping down to the cliffs, were two black-tailed deer, grazing. I moved in among the trees for some photos while other bus passengers hurried by behind me, talking at full volume about anything other than their surroundings, oblivious to nature around them. Finally, someone spotted me with my camera and took a closer look. By the time I was finished, a small crowd had gathered with people snapping photos of the deer less than 100 feet away. To their credit, no one tried to approach them more closely.

Black-Tailed Deer
Shot with a 300 mm focal length lens, cropping this photo was not necessary; this deer was close.

I reached the top of the steps leading down to the lighthouse and stopped for a moment to take in the view. We were on a point of land facing due west with sweeping views to the south and northwest. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean met in a somewhat blurred line out in the distance. The sound of the waves and calling birds laid a background soundtrack to the chatter of the people around me. There was almost no wind at all. An absolutely perfect day to be at Point Reyes.

Map View of Point Reyes
Google’s Map view of Point Reyes. The lighthouse is on the left (west) point; Chimney Rock is on the right (east) point.

There were 300 steps down to the lighthouse. A sign at the top of the steps warned that the climb back up was the equivalent of climbing a 30-story building. (I seriously doubt that. The stairs were shallow and easy. Maybe 20 stories.)

Lighthouse at 70 mm

This is an interesting illustration of the way various lens focal lengths affect the appearance of distances. The top image was shot from the top of the stairs at 70mm. The bottom image was shot about halfway down the stairs (on my way back up) at 10mm. Neither image was cropped; both are shown here at the same size. Doesn’t the stairway look longer in the second image?

Lighthouse at 10mm

Once at the lighthouse, I joined a few other people there who were actively looking for whales. We were rewarded many times. A pair of young whales, maybe 20-25 feet long, were making their way around the point. They’d surface together every 5 or 10 minutes quite close to us, send up two sprays of misty air, give us a good look at their backs, and then disappear under the waves. They did this at least a half-dozen times while I watched with the others. Good photos weren’t possible — there just wasn’t any exciting activity. These whales were motoring, not auditioning for SeaWorld. This is the best I could do.

Whales
Yes, there are two gray whales in this photo. No NatGeo photo op yesterday.

Lighthouse Tower
An example of symmetry — or as much as possible, considering the light and rust patterns.

Since I wasn’t getting any satisfying whale photos, I started looking at other things that were interesting. The lighthouse, flowers along the stairway, equipment in the lighthouse building. Other themes and techniques I like to explore in my photography include symmetry, patterns, filling the frame with an image, and putting foreground items against out-of-focus backgrounds.

Detail from Lighthouse
I don’t know why I like this photo so much, but I do. It seems to me that anyone can take a picture. But when a picture evokes an emotion — as this one does for me — it’s something worth looking at.

Iris Iris
Two examples of an interesting foreground — irises in bloom — against an out-of-focus background. Which do you think works better?

Red Maid
I’m not sure, but I think this one is called red maid.

Voilet
And I’m pretty sure this is a violet.

Indian Paintbrush
I’m pretty sure this is Indian Paintbrush.

Yellow Bush Lupine
Yellow bush lupine grows in huge clumps out on the peninsula.

One of the huge benefits of traveling alone is that you can spend your day the way you want to do it. No one to compromise with. No one to get bored and hurry you along. No one to drag you places you couldn’t care less about.

That was me yesterday. Spending as much time as I liked, seeing what I wanted to see. I know a companion would have lost patience with the amount of time I spent kneeling or even lying in the dirt to frame up some of these photos. I’ve had traveling companions like that in the past and I can’t begin to imagine the things I missed because of them.

(You could also argue that traveling companions can reveal a whole new world for you. I think that’s possible — with someone who is imaginative, open to seeing new things, and not opposed to changing plans as opportunities arise. But I haven’t had a companion like that for many, many years. Instead, I spent a lot of time stuck with someone who was tied to a schedule. Any suggested change resulted in, “But I thought we were going to….” I’d rather travel alone than deal with that ever again.)

Once I’d finished up at the lighthouse and made the climb up the 300 steps, I walked back to the bus stop. Along the way I peeked through the row of trees to see if the deer were still there. They were. And that’s when I noticed a third deer lying in the shade of a bush.

Two Deer
Can you see the deer in the background?

While I was enjoying my day, taking lots of photos, and really having a great time being outdoors in such a beautiful place, I was also chatting with the folks around me. One by one I met up with about a dozen of the SPP members, including Lynn, who’d organized the meetup. The group had broken into smaller subgroups of twos and fours, each wandering around the park at their own pace. Nice. No pressure.

I rode the bus to the Chimney Rock stop. There were three points of interest there: the elephant seal beach, the historic life boat station, and Chimney Rock point. The elephant seals were closest, so I took that path, getting into a conversation along the way with a woman from Las Vegas who was also traveling alone — and enjoying every minute of it. She and I would cross paths a few more times before the end of the day.

At the end of the path was a lookout point where we could clearly see hundreds of young elephant seals and their mothers stretched out on the sand, sunning themselves. Every once in a while, one of them would start barking or screeching or making some other weird noise. Seals would swim out of the water and shimmy up onto the beach. A harbor seal splashed around in the weeds just offshore. There were no breakers in the sheltered cove, making it ideal for the young animals to rest and learn how to swim.

Elephant Seals
Elephant seal weanlings sun themselves on the beach with their mothers.

Seal Beach
There were hundreds of seals along the stretch of sheltered beach.

I chatted with a volunteer naturalist about the seals and the flowers I’d been seeing throughout the day. She was extremely informative and had some visual aids to show how the features of the elephant seals change throughout their lifetimes. While we chatted, a male seal swam up to the base of the cliff right below us. Meanwhile, a ranger worked with some kids to teach them about the seals. (Really, parents, why aren’t you taking your kids to places like this?)

My Ex Brother In Law
You can kind of get an idea why they call them elephant seals — the males get an elongated nose as they age.

Chocolate Lily
Chocolate lily. This plant also grows in the mountains near where I live.

Afterwards, the naturalist walked back along the trail with me and another member of the group to show us a relatively rare chocolate lily in bloom. I’d only seen one before — on a wildflower hike in Washington State near where I live — and it was nice to see one again out in the wild.

Although the historic boathouse was open that day for tours, I decided to skip it. Instead. I walked out along the 1.6 mile trail to Chimney Rock. I got a nice photo of the boathouse and Drakes Bay from along the trail. I also snapped some photographs of some of the flowers I’ve already shown above.

Historic Boathouse
The historic life boat station with the old pier and seal beach in the distance.

The trail to Chimney Rock was interesting mostly because it ran along a relatively narrow spit of land with open ocean on one side and Drakes Bay on the other. The ocean side had dramatic rock cliffs with more seals sunning themselves on small beaches. At the end was a rocky point, a fence to discourage wandering along the cliff, and some benches. Off the point, a buoy bounced it the waves, making a mournful sound. Some members of SPP were having lunch.

From Chimney Rock
View from along the trail to Chimney Rock. The beach was full of sunning seals.

I’d chosen to carry camera equipment instead of food and was quite hungry by that point. It was after 2 PM. I was starting to get a little worried about Penny being stuck in the car for 4-1/2 hours. It was time to head back.

I met up with Lynn again at the bus stop. Most of the group was going to stop in Point Reyes Station — coincidentally, at the restaurant I’d had breakfast — for a meal. Others were going to the Cowgirl Creamery nearby. Neither plan sounded that good to me; I wanted to try something different and preferred to avoid the temptations of cheese. And I knew I couldn’t wait around for the group to gather. So I decided to stick to my solo plan for the day.

Back at the main parking lot, Penny was fine but glad to see me. I put her leash on and walked her out along one edge of the parking lot where there was a picnic area with grass. Despite the No Dogs sign, there were four other dogs on leashes nearby. Penny got a lot of pee and barking out of her system before we climbed back into the truck and headed out.

My stomach did the driving, retracing our route past the cows and various park turns toward Point Reyes. When I got to Inverness, I spotted Vladimir’s Czech Restaurant, which had outdoor seating. Soon Penny and I were sitting beneath the shade of an umbrella, eating stuffed cabbage with a hearty grain bread. The sound of live musicians playing Irish music (for some reason) drifted out the restaurant’s open doors, flooding the patio with a cheerful sound.

I made a few more stops on the way home — Point Reyes Station, which was packed with people, and Muir Woods, which was just emptying out — before heading home. I’ll cover Muir Woods in another blog post; it deserves one.

It had been another great day out. Yes, I’d seen some whales, but I’d also enjoyed experimenting with photography again, doing some good walking, and being out in great weather. Although I’d debated spending the night in the area and doing more the next day, I soon realized that an overnight trip would be better during the week when it wasn’t so crowded. I have a month left here in California; I need to plan a nice two or three day trip with Penny before I head back home.

Maybe next week? Got nothing else planned and the only schedule I need to check is my own.

Bees: The Riskier Hive Split

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Just a quick note another long, drawn out post to document a recent hive split and the results so far.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

Last year, I split my original hive into 2 hives. I called it “the risky hive split” because of the way I did it — kind of haphazardly with my fingers crossed. I basically pulled a few brood frames with swarm cells out of an existing hive and stuck them in a new hive box with some honey and empty frames. The split worked because at least one of the queens hatched and took over. But that new hive was never very healthy and was the second to die after winter. The original hive was the first to die.

Mites on a Sticky Board
The actual size of this square is 1 inch.

Now you could say that they died because of the split. Instead of one strong hive, I wound up with two week ones. But I did the split in mid-July and prevented a swarm. The original hive continued to thrive. I think the reality was much more sinister. Both of those hives had terrible varroa mite infestations — I documented this with sticky boards in late summer. Although I did what I could to get rid of the mites, including drone frames, screened bottom boards, and miticide, I think the damage was done and the colonies were weak going into winter. The winter was harsh with few warm days and the bees simply didn’t make it.

Springtime at My Mobile Apiary

Fast forward to this year. Of my three hives, only my swarm capture hive survived the winter. Not only did it survive, but it was going like gangbusters within a few days of setting it up in my temporary home in the Sacramento area of California. (That hive, by the way, had very few mites in late summer. Coincidence? I don’t think so.)

If you’re not a beekeeper, all this is probably meaningless to you. Let me try to explain as simply as I can.

Each hive must have a single queen and a whole bunch of worker bees. It might also have drones, but doesn’t really need them. (Strong women really don’t need men either, but I digress.) The queen’s job is to lay eggs to make more bees. The workers’ jobs are to do everything else — tend to the eggs and larvae (or brood), maintain the hive, guard the hive, gather pollen and nectar, and make honey.

If there isn’t a queen, no new bees can be added to the hive. Within a month or two, all the bees will have died and the colony will have collapsed. The workers instinctively know this. They also know if the current queen is sick and needs replacement (supercedure) or if the hive is becoming so crowded that half the bees need to move out with the queen so there’s room for a new queen to start fresh (swarming).

The workers have the ability to turn any egg into a queen when they think they’ll need one. They do this by forming a special elongated cell for the egg and feeding it a diet of royal jelly, which they make, until the cell is capped. After a longer-than-usual larval stage, a queen emerges. If there’s more than one queen in a hive, the strongest queen will kill the weaker ones.

I’ve done four pretty thorough hive inspections since arriving here and setting up the bees — including the initial setup/inspection about a month ago. The second inspection showed impressive brood development but not much in the way of honey storage. In addition, I was very surprised to see that the queen’s laying pattern covered almost an entire brood frame — not just the middle as most queens do. There were brood cells all the way to the side and bottom edges of each brood frame with just areas along the top and in the corners filled with honey.

The other surprise was how many of the frames were being used for brood. The deep body had just nine frames in it — a strategy I’d like to avoid in the future — and there was brood in six or seven of them. At that rate, I figured the queen would soon run out of space for brood and the bees would need more room for honey. So I placed a queen excluder atop the deep box, a spacer with an entrance on top of that, and a medium box with mostly drawn out — but otherwise empty — comb on top of that. The idea was to encourage the bees to move the honey upstairs, where I could pull frames for extraction and replace them with empty frames. The queen excluder would keep the queen downstairs. In theory, it should work.

It didn’t. On the next inspection, I found that the queen just kept laying eggs downstairs, making the hive ever more crowded, but the bees had not started to put honey in the medium super above them. I looked for signs of swarm preparation but found none. Just a whole lot of bees and a whole lot of brood.

That gave me the idea that they wanted to make bees. That was fine with me; I was hoping to go home with at least three active hives. Maybe I should try another hive split?

The Riskier Hive Split

Now, the last time I did a hive split, I had swarm cells — that means that the workers were already trying to make queens, likely in advance of a swarm event. What made that split risky is that I never actually found the queen. I just made sure that each hive had brood frames with swarm cells on them. I figured that the bees would continue to tend to those swarm cells until a queen emerged. If a hive wound up with more than one queen, they’d sort it out for themselves.

And that’s what they apparently did. They certainly didn’t swarm and I have no way of knowing which hive wound up with the old queen — or even if she was killed by a new queen.

But in this case, I didn’t have any swarm or supercedure cells. No future queen.

What I did, have, however, was the location of the queen. I found her on one of the three primary brood frames during my third inspection. I was prepared. I’d already assembled another deep hive box with brood and honey frames. I slid the frame with the queen on it back into her hive and then pulled out the other two primary brood frames, each of which had very young larvae in them. I can only assume there were eggs as well — the damn things are so small that I just can’t see them in cells against the yellow background. (Note to self: only buy black foundation for deep frames from now on.) I slid those frames with their bees into the new box and put empty brood frames from that box into the original hive. Then I took one of the honey frames full of bees and put that into the new box. In all, I probably put about 30% of the original hive’s bees and 20% of its brood into the new box. I closed up the new box and pointed its door 90° to the left (south)

What I was hoping, of course, was that the bees in the new hive would quickly realize that they were queenless and do something about it — namely, take a few of those cells containing eggs or newly hatched larvae and do what they needed to do to turn them into queens. That would be the best case scenario. The worst case is that they’d abandon the hive and find their way back into their old hive, which was sitting right beside them with its door pointing 90° to the right (west), leaving the brood untended so it would die.

Of course, you won’t find many bee books that tell you to do this. Most tell you that if you want to split a hive, you should buy a queen, put bees from an existing colony into a new hive box, and introduce the new queen to them. If they accept the queen — which they should if you do everything right — the queen will get right to work making more bees.

I had a few more things to do with the original hive before I closed it back up.

I had a drone frame in there and it was more than half full and capped, but I pulled it out and replaced it with a regular frame. Trouble is, it won’t fit in my RV’s freezer and I had to borrow freezer space at the airport office. Doing that once is okay, but I don’t think they’d like to see a new frame full of bee larvae every three weeks. (Yes, I did wrap it in a black plastic bag.) I’ll save the drone frames for when I get home and can access my chest freezer.

In the meantime, I’d bought a comb honey setup with shallow frames and wax foundation. Not knowing what else to do with it, I stuck it on top of the medium box on the original hive. Maybe they’d prefer that kind of foundation over the medium frames. (That would certainly make me happy, since I want to make comb honey.)

I closed the hive back up, put away my tools, wished the bees luck, and left them.

Throughout the week, I visited the hives. I saw bees coming and going from both hives, but far more at the original hive than the new one.

Progress Report

And that brings me to my most recent hive inspection, which I did earlier today. My main goal was to see what was going on in that new hive. Were there bees in there? Were they working? Most importantly, had they built queen cells?

I suited up and opened their box. I immediately saw bees inside — a good sign. I pulled out a few frames along the edges. No new brood — but I really didn’t expect any.

Queen Cell
This photo shows a queen cell and some drone cells from last year. I didn’t take any photos of the queen cells in my new hive.

Then I pulled out one of the middle brood frames — one of the ones that had been inside the old hive box. I was thrilled to see queen cells on one side. I counted two of them. The other frame had five queen cells. This was looking good. I put everything back in place and closed it up. No need to disturb the bees any more than I needed to.

Of course, now I have a new worry. If the queen hatches successfully, will she find drones to mate with when she goes out for her mating flights? Maybe freezing that drone frame was a bad idea. (Cut me some slack; I’m new at this.)

The original hive, however, was a bit of a disappointment. The bees still hadn’t put any honey in either of the upper boxes. To make matters worse, they’d begun to fill the queen excluder with wax. I had quite a time clearing it out. Not knowing what else to do, I reassembled the hive the way it had been. If the new hive produces a queen and she starts laying eggs, I’ll put one of the honey supers on that hive.

In the Meantime…

A beekeeper with a pollination business here in California is selling his hives. He has 50 left and is selling them in palettes of four. I’ll be visiting him next week. Who knows? I might come back to the airport with another four beehives.

Joy-Flying Over Napa Valley

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Sometimes it’s nice to treat yourself to an afternoon out.

I went for a joy ride in my helicopter this afternoon.

I hadn’t been flying since last Wednesday when I finished my Part 135 check ride with an FAA inspector from South Dakota. The helicopter was sitting out on the ramp, blades tied down, gathering dust and then standing up to high winds for a week.

Torn Tie Down
Like the helicopter, the tie-downs are now 8 years old. A strong wind earlier this week tore this one.

One of the blade tie-downs had torn and, although it was still holding, I thought I should repair it. So I untied the blades, brought the tie-downs inside, and did some mending. I looked out the back window while I was on the phone with a client, talking about work this coming summer season back home in Washington. My helicopter sat there patiently in the afternoon’s gentle breeze, less than 200 feet away, waiting for me to tie down its blades again.

Or fly it.

So I flew it.

It was very warm this afternoon — in the high 70s here in the Sacramento area. Too warm for the black T-shirt and jeans I was wearing. So I slipped into a tank top and shorts before going out with Penny and my iPad and my GoPro camera.

Penny waited on her bed in the front passenger seat while I preflighted and added a half quart of oil. Then I snapped the camera into it’s “BellyCam” position, turned on its wifi, and climbed on board beside Penny. A short while later, the engine was running, the camera was recording video, and I was listening to classic rock through my Bose headset. I made a radio call to the empty sky around me, eased up the collective, and lifted gently off the ground. Then I was speeding across the runway only 10 feet off the ground, gathering momentum and climbing out into the California afternoon.

As usual when I’m joy-flying, I didn’t have a specific destination. I had some vague idea of flying down to Nut Tree airport (VCB) in Vacaville, which I’ve been told has a restaurant within walking distance. Thought I’d check it out as a possible destination for when my friend George gets back from Alaska and we take turns flying his gyro and my helicopter. But that destination was too close. I wanted to get out for at least 45 minutes. Maybe I’d stop there on my way back.

I wandered south along highway 505 and turned right at Winters. I was following the road that runs to Lake Solano County Park, where I’d gone paddling the previous Thursday, and beyond that to Lake Berryessa. I was flying into the sun, though, and I knew the video wouldn’t be much good. Would it capture any decent footage of that nice canyon going up to the Lake?

Apparently, it did.

Aerial View of Lake Solano Park
Here’s an aerial view of the Lake Solano County Park. You can see the dock where I put in my kayak last week. I paddled upstream (up in this photo) from there.

I followed the canyon up to the lake, keeping a sharp eye out for wires. There were power poles on the right side of the canyon, but none seemed to cross the canyon. I flew over the dam and headed up lake. The water level was low — California is suffering from a serious drought — but the hillsides were fresh and green from the rain we’d had two weeks ago. Without more rain, the grass would turn brown, possibly before it even got a chance to go to seed.

I saw cattle in the low lands along the lake and ranches up in the hills. Very picturesque.

I flew about halfway up the northeast side of the lake with the sun coming into the cabin from my left. Penny, who had been hot while we were flying into the sun — she hasn’t fully shed her heavy black winter coat — was now in partial shade, leaned back in her seat but still panting from the heat. I was comfortable in my summer clothes; I didn’t realize until I got home how much sun I’d gotten. (Next time I’ll wear shorter shorts and really work on my tan.)

Napa Valley Balloons
In Napa Valley? Want an amazing experience you’ll remember for the rest of your life? Fly with these guys.

I got the idea that I wanted to see Yountville from the air. About a month ago — the day after I arrived with the RV, in fact, a hot air balloon had landed in my “backyard” here — the airport ramp. I’d introduced myself to the pilot and sent him a copy of a picture I’d taken of him landing, along with a suggestion that we swap flights. He booked me on a flight tomorrow morning at Yountville, at the Domain Chandon tasting room. I wanted to see what it looked like from the air.

Hell, I can come up with an excuse to fly anywhere if I try hard enough.

So I banked hard to the left and flew back down lake. I figured I’d follow the road toward Rutherford and then branch off to the south when I got to Napa Valley. I switched the camera from video mode to time-lapse with shots every 10 seconds. I captured this image as we flew down the lake.

Lake Berryessa
Here’s a shot of Lake Berryessa.

I followed the road I’d driven a few times before, most recently on Sunday, on my way back from Napa Valley. Then I made some turns, following valleys, watching out for power lines. Finally, I popped over some hills and dropped down into Napa Valley over the Silverado Trail.

Silverado Trail
Over the Silverado Trail, somewhere near Rutherford, CA.

Below me, the homes, wineries, and vineyards of Napa Valley stretched in all directions. Although the vineyards were not yet leafing out, there was an abundance of green in the grass, trees, and hillsides. It was gorgeous.

Somewhere around this time, I started thinking of my wasband, as I often do when I have amazing experiences I think he would enjoy. We did more than a few joy-flights together over the years, exploring the desert around our home in Arizona or going further afield, perhaps on cross-country trips to Lake Powell or Las Vegas or Washington State. We shared a bird’s eye view of so many amazing things from the air: the red rocks of Sedona, the blue waters of Lake Powell, the winding path of the Colorado River, the grandeur of the Hoover Dam, the haystack rock formations of the Oregon coast.

As I flew over the vineyards, I could imagine him beside me, trying to identify things we’d seen from the ground on previous visits to Napa Valley. His memory was better than mine — at least before he became delusional — and maybe he’d remind me of things I’d forgotten. Would he spot the winery where they’d served us chocolate cake with our cabernet? Surely it was down there somewhere. He might remember where.

But I reminded myself that any fond memories of my wasband were flawed and false. Maybe he wouldn’t have enjoyed this afternoon’s flight after all. Although he always seemed to like being in the helicopter, especially when he got to take the controls, these days I wasn’t sure what he really thought of those flights. He insinuated in court that he thought they were “work” that, for some reason, he should have been paid for — even though he lacked the pilot certification to do commercial flying and I was always sitting beside him in the pilot-in-command seat. Thinking back on our last few years together, I remember all the weekends he spent in front of a television, watching DVRed car shows. Perhaps he preferred doing that to flying. (He didn’t fly his plane either.)

His loss.

I don’t think I could ever get tired of flying a helicopter, especially on days like today when I’m free to go wherever I like in such a beautiful place. Sure beats anything on TV.

I consulted Foreflight on my iPad and realized I had passed Yountville. I made a sweeping turn to the right, lining up with route 29 on the other side of the valley as I headed north. Moments later, I overflew Yountville and the site I think we’ll be departing from tomorrow in a hot air balloon.

Domaine Chandon
I’m not 100% positive, but I think this is where our balloon will be launching from tomorrow.

I continued up the valley, once again retracing my route, in reverse, from Sunday’s drive. Rutherford, St. Helena, Calistoga. I saw the V.Sattui Vineyard looking quiet and empty on the late weekday afternoon. I saw the main drag in St. Helena. I saw the spas and resorts in Calistoga.

St. Helena
An aerial view of St. Helena in Napa Valley.

At Calistoga, I turned east again. I climbed over the mountains on the east side of the valley and dropped into a rugged canyon. I’d been flying for more than 30 minutes and was starting to think of heading back. I punched a GoTo to my base airport into the GPS and turned in the direction of the line. On Sunday I’d driven past Clear Lake, but I didn’t feel like flying out that way. I thought I’d give Lake Berryessa another flyby instead.

East of Calistoga
The mountains east of Calistoga are rugged, with basalt cliffs not unlike those near my home in Washington.

Pope Valley
The valley east of Napa — which I think is called Pope Valley — has vineyards, lakes, and ranch land.

Lake Berryessa Narrows
A narrow channel on Lake Berryessa. I had to be careful here; there were wires across the lake nearby.

Dam at Lake Berryessa
The BellyCam just happened to capture this perfect image of the Dam at the lower end of Lake Berryessa.

I flew down the lake, over the dam, and back into the canyon leading to Winters. Then, before I reached town, I headed north in the foothills with the vague notion of overflying the Cache Creek Casino. But before I got to Esparto, I changed my mind. Instead, I turned inbound to my base airport and, after a few radio calls, landed on the runway and taxied into parking. I set it down gently exactly where it had been an hour and 10 minutes earlier.

Penny
Penny waited for me while the BellyCam continued to snap photos every 10 seconds.

Penny stood up and looked at me, wagging her tail. She was ready to get out. I lifted her out and set her on the ground. She waited at the nose of the helicopter while I cooled the engine and shut it down. The camera caught several images of her standing on the tarmac with my mobile mansion home in the background.

Later, I used the mended tie-downs to secure the main rotor blades and locked up the helicopter.

It had been a great afternoon flight — one I’m glad I treated myself to. I’ll fly again soon — maybe with a balloon pilot beside me and two of his crew in back. Or maybe with my pilot friend George at the controls, exploring a new place. (Something tells me that he’s not very interested in television.) I’ve got a month left here and I plan to enjoy it every way I can.

I never did get down to Nut Tree airport.

Comments on the Seattle Helicopter Crash

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Just a few words about how heartless and stupid people can be.

KOMO Helicopter
One of KOMO’s helicopters departs the Seattle hellpad on a spring day two years ago.

I was sitting at my desk, writing a blog post about Sunday’s day trip, when a brief news blurb on NPR mentioned a helicopter had crashed at the base of the Space Needle in Seattle. My friend Greg flies KOMO’s helicopter from a rooftop helipad there. My blood ran cold as I got on Facebook to message him and his wife, hoping he wasn’t the pilot involved.

Pam came back quickly. It wasn’t Greg. I felt relief. But did it really matter? Was the accident any less tragic because my friend hadn’t been hurt? Of course not. Someone else’s loved ones had been killed. It was a tragedy no matter who was involved.

Of course, someone posted the breaking news story link from KOMO’s website to the Helicopter Pilot’s forum on Facebook. And people were commenting. Stupid, thoughtless people.

The accident had happened only minutes before — hell, the fire was probably still burning — and guys who are supposedly helicopter pilots were already speculating about the cause and spreading misinformation.

“Settling with power,” one genius proclaimed.

“According to witnesses, he was attempting to land on a roof and rolled off,” another amateur reporter added.

It was pretty obvious to me that neither of these “experts” had read the 150 words in the original version of the story they were commenting on — heck, why bother read before commenting? — which clearly said the helicopter was taking off when the accident occurred. Settling with power isn’t something that is likely on takeoff from a rooftop helipad. And it was an established helipad, not merely “a roof.”

Later, the first genius added another piece of fictitious insight: “Yea originally they said he was landing. Just heard there was a crane put up, and be hit a wire.”

“Just heard”? From where? None of the news stories — even hours later when the stories are more fully developed — say anything about a crane.

Other comments and speculations that were clearly not tactful or fully informed followed. I think some of them may have been deleted, but the responses to them remain. Most of us are agreed that this is no time for speculations — especially when there’s a shortage of facts to support them.

The situation was worse, of course, on KOMO’s website where the article appeared. Some cold-hearted conservatives rejoiced over the death of two liberals — as if they knew the political leanings of the pilot and his passenger and as if that actually mattered. One moron even commented that it was too bad Obama wasn’t on board.

Seriously? Do people actually think like that?

I spent ten minutes flagging obnoxious and offensive comments before finally giving up and getting on with my day.

But come on people, let’s look at the reality of the situation: There was an accident in Seattle that took the lives of two men. Men with lives and families. Men likely doing the work they loved. Men who lived and breathed and loved and dreamed, just like all of us.

Surely they deserve better than some of the uninformed speculation and heartless comments the reports of their death are attracting.

Rest in peace, guys.