Tag Archives: Arizona

Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure, take 2

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I finally make the tour a reality.

A while back, I wrote a post that outlined my ideas for a 9-day helicopter tour to various destinations in the southwest. After writing up the tour, I realized some of the impracticalities of it — for example, booking the hotel rooms and tours in advance and the little FAA rest rule that forbid me to fly part 135 flights more than 7 days in a row (oops).

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the tour. I’ve since shortened it up and devised a more reasonable plan: a 6-day, 5-night excursion that includes Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell at Page, Monument Valley, and Flagstaff, with excellent accommodations and side trips and tours at each destination.

You can read the finalized description on the Flying M Air Web site’s new Excursions page. I haven’t added the photos yet and I’ve just begun work on the brochure. But I do have 7 sets of dates scheduled and ready to go. With a more approachable price tag of $4,995 per couple, most folks I’ve spoken to seem to think it’ll sell very well. Now all I need to do is get the word out about the trip’s availability.

Are you ready to go on a helicopter adventure? Well, what are you waiting for? Stop by the Flying M Air Web site and get the details. Then give me a call to book your trip.

helicopter, excursion, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Page, Monument Valley, Flagstaff

Keeping Up to Date with this Site

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A few tips for keeping up to date with what’s new without having to surf over here every day or two.

The other day, Cliff, one of my editors, asked me (in an iChat chat) what the best way was to keep track of the new material on this site. He wanted to read my “pearls of wisdom” (his words, not mine, and I think he was teasing me) regularly.

Cliff uses a newsreader to monitor blogs. I think he was more interested in the how-to stuff I write to support my books than the somewhat boring pieces about my every day life. After all, do people really want to know that as I type this, my bird is barking like a dog in the next room? Or that I hung up on a Republican canvasser who called me in my office today? Or that today’s humidity in Phoenix is only 3%?

I told Cliff there were a few ways to keep up with this site’s new content:

  • Subscribe to an RSS feed for the entire blog. The good thing about doing this is that you won’t miss anything new. The 25 most recent posts are always available in the feed, so if you check in at least once a week, you’ll be all set. The bad thing about that is that you have to use a newsreader (which many people don’t use). And you will get summaries of all 25 most recently posted articles, including the ones about barking birds, being rude to republicans, and Arizona weather. If you want to do this, use my Feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/marialanger.
  • Visit my RSS feeds page and subscribe to just the feed(s) that interest you. Just interested in a book or two? Subscribe to just the feeds for those titles. Want to learn more about flying a helicopter for hire? Subscribe to just that topic’s feed. You’ll still need a newsreader, but at least you won’t have to read summaries about posts that you don’t think will interest you. (Of course, you may be surprised by what you miss.)
  • Use the E-mail Notification form in the navigation bar on most (if not all) pages of this site to subscribe to this blog by e-mail. This is a great way to keep up with the site without having to set up or use a newsreader. I subscribed to see how it worked and I’m very pleased with the results. Each day that I post to this blog, an e-mail message is created that provides a brief summary, with links, for all the posts written that day. So if I wrote 10 posts that day, you get one e-mail. If I wrote one post that day, you get one e-mail. If I didn’t write any posts that day, you don’t get an e-mail at all. The e-mail goes out in the middle of the night, so the message is in your in-box in the morning (like the New York Times, delivered, but without the airs). There are no ads and you don’t get spammed. Best of all, when you get sick of reading this drivel, you can cancel your subscription to stop the e-mails.

Of course, you can always make a point of stopping by this site to see what’s new — the old fashioned way. Visitors are always welcome.

And have you read yet about my chicken with the crooked beak?

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When the Sun Shines in Arizona, the Sand is Hot

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The valuable lesson I learned today.

About a month ago, I put a standing bird feeder in the backyard. It’s a metal pole with a decorative tray that holds a pie pan. I pour seeds into the pie pan and birds come to eat it. Squirrels and chipmunks and other rodents can’t climb the pole, so the seed (that isn’t scattered to the ground) is for birds only.

Bird FeederAn amazing variety of birds come to the feeder every day. Cardinals, orioles, doves, quail, thrushes, and all kinds of birds I can’t even recognize. It’s such a good show that I’m trying to figure out how to put a Webcam on it.

Of course, the birds don’t come if there isn’t any seed. I bought a 50 lb. bag and keep it on the back patio, in the shade, with a plastic container in it to use as a scoop. Mice haven’t found their way into the bag yet, which is a good thing. The birds go through roughly one scoop a day.

A while ago, I noticed that the seed supply in the feeder was getting low. I decided to fill it. I also made the fatal decision to go outside without my shoes on.

I must have been getting too much sun on my head lately because it was a decision only someone who is brain dead could make. I didn’t feel how hot the sand was in the backyard until I got halfway to the feeder. Then, since I was already halfway there, I figured I might as well go all the way. (Second bad decision.) Thank heaven I’d turned on the sprinkler for our mesquite tree (and the birds) before hitting the sand. After virtually throwing the seeds into the feeder, I ran back to the sprinkler. I think I even heard the hiss of steam as I used the water to cool my feet.

So today’s lesson is this: When the thermometer reads 107° and the sun is shining, put your shoes on before going outside.

Duh.

Lake Powell from the Air

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I get a few sample photos from the photographer I took over Lake Powell last month.

In April, I had the pleasure of flying five photographers on an afternoon photo flight over Lake Powell. I wrote about it in “Flying At Lake Powell” in this blog.

The photographer who arranged it all, Mike Reyfman, is based in Chicago. He’s a professional photographer, with quite a portfolio of excellent work. His Web site, Mike Reyfman Photography, displays his images, which are available as stock photos and enlargements. He seems to do a lot of work out here in the southwest.

Lake PowellAlthough I enjoyed the scenery while in flight, I didn’t really know how the photos my passengers were taking were coming out. Not until Mike sent me three sample images. Here’s my favorite of the bunch, downsized for Web display.

This is the difference between a professional photographer and a tourist out taking snapshots. I have a terrible time capturing the beauty of what I see around me — and there’s plenty of it sometimes. But a good photographer can focus (pun intended) on a part of what he sees to create a truly memorable image.

If you’re interested in seeing other images Mike took on that trip, visit his Web site. I think you’ll be amazed.

And if you’d like to try your hand at aerial photography over a beautiful place, visit the Flying M Air Web site to learn more about my charter services.

It’s Not Just Sand

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I have to explain to passengers that the desert is more than sand dunes.

I had some passengers on a helicopter flight a few weeks back who were just visiting the Phoenix area from somewhere back east. At sometime during the flight, they told me they were hoping to see the real desert.

My DesertI was confused. Wickenburg sits in the Sonoran desert. That’s the desert with the big saguaro cacti all over the place. It rains, on average, less than 8 inches a year. The desert can’t get any more real than that.

My passenger clarified. “Well, where’s the sand?”

The sand, unfortunately, is all over the place. In washes, in my front yard, in my shoes and cars, and in my hair and eyes during a dust storm. Sand (and dust) is a part of life here.

But not the kind of sand my passenger was thinking about. He was thinking of sand dunes. You know. Like the kind in movies that take place in the Sahara desert.

I began to understand. His mental picture of the desert included the rolling sand dunes from the movies. The same sand dunes that had hazards like quicksand and oasises with palm trees and ponds of water.

I explained that there were sand dunes in the southwest desert, but they were only part of the desert landscape — not the whole thing. I told him about the big sand dunes west of Yuma on I-8, and the small sand dunes west of Blythe off of I-10 (I’m not even sure if you can see those from the road, but I see them from the helicopter when I fly that way), and the medium sized sand dunes in Death Valley.

Then I put on my tour conductor voice and gave him a summary description of the Sonoran desert landscape, including information about its cacti, trees, animal life, and other features.

Of course, all this has me wondering how many people think the desert is just a big sand dune.

Monument ValleyOne of the things I love about the desert is its diversity. There are so many kinds of desert, each with their own little ecosystem. Drive 50 or 100 miles in any direction and you’re likely to be in a whole different kind of desert. For example, if you drive up route 93 from Wickenburg, you’ll enter another kind of desert where there are no saguaro cacti, but plenty of Joshua trees. Drive up to Monument Valley and you’ll see the layers of underlying rock exposed in magnificent formations, with scrubby trees and bushes hanging on for life in the fine red sand.

Just don’t go down to Phoenix. There isn’t much of the desert left down there, with all the asphalt, golf courses, non-native plants (like palm trees, for heaven’s sake!), and irrigation.