Tag Archives: Oregon

A Look Back at this Winter 2025/26 Travels

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I take a quick look back at the nearly three month trip I took to Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

As regular readers know, I go south every winter. I love my home but I don’t like winters here. It isn’t the cold as much as it’s the dreariness. So I go south, usually to Arizona and the desert southwest, although I did spend two winters on my boat on the Great Loop in mostly Florida a few years ago.

This year, I left on November 27, 2025 (Thanksgiving Day) and returned home on February 12, 2026. I have an excellent winter housesitter, which takes a lot of the worries out of leaving home for so long. He’s a skier and he likes the proximity of Mission Ridge and Steven’s Pass, two local ski resorts. He was not happy about the lack of real winter weather this year. But that lack of winter weather is what got me home early; I was supposed to come home at the end of February.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to write up a summary of my trip’s expenses. I think I managed to do it quite affordably this year. You be the judge.

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This Year’s Long Drive South

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I prepare for my annual southern migration, this time with a purpose.

I go south every year for the winter. Although I love my home and I’d like nothing more than to be able to spend the winter here in comfort — writing at my desk, making jewelry in my studio, editing video at my computer, and maybe even hitting the cross-country ski trails around Mazama and Winthrop — I find the short daylight hours and dreary weather depressing. It starts as soon as we change the clocks — I’m firmly in the DST year-round camp — and by the first of December, when Shadow Time starts, I’m going nuts with SAD. The only solution is to go south, so that’s what I do. I pack up my camper and drive to Arizona, where I have some friends and favorite campsites, and California, to hit my favorite hot spring.

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Helicopter Nose View: Wenatchee to Hillsboro, full-length with music

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My entire August 2012 helicopter trip from Wenatchee WA to Hillsboro OR as seen from the nose of my helicopter just after dawn, set to music.

From the FlyingMAir YouTube channel, here’s all the video I shot on that great August 2012 flight. It’s the kind of video you’d put on the TV or a monitor when you just want to relax. Enjoy.

Helicopter Nose View: Wenatchee to Hillsboro, full-length with music

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My entire August 2012 helicopter trip from Wenatchee WA to Hillsboro OR as seen from the nose of my helicopter just after dawn, set to music.

From the FlyingMAir YouTube channel, here’s all the video I shot on that great August 2012 flight. It’s the kind of video you’d put on the TV or a monitor when you just want to relax. Enjoy.

Snowbirding 2022: Malaga WA to Glenns Ferry ID

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My first day of travel — in vlog format.

Well, I’m off on this year’s snowbirding trip to points south. I came very close to not going. It was last week’s cold weather snap and the fact that my house-sitters had no where to live if I didn’t leave that finally got me packed and out the door.

I’m trying something new this year: video logging or vlogging of my travels. This video is my first stab at the format. It’s not perfect but as I edit and compile the video, I get more ideas on how to make it better so I expect my entries to improve as time goes on.

Why am I doing this? Well, I want to be able to vlog my future boat journeys. Let’s face it: most people these days would rather watch a video than read a blog — even if they both contain the same content. And I really do get a kick out of showing off some of the stuff I see and do along the way. So these videos are my way of learning how to and practicing vlogging.

I’m using three cameras to make these videos, but I’ll likely streamline it down to just two. A GoPro Hero 8 produces time-lapse videos of my drive. I think folks might get a kick out of seeing some of the terrain I drive through. There’s a whole lot of nothing out west and the folks who live in big cities often have no clue. (Yes, I did pass a “Next Gas 111 Miles” sign yesterday; if the camera caught it, I’ll share it.) It’s also interesting to see how the geology changes. And the weather.

The other two cameras are actually iPhones. One is the iPhone 8 Plus I got for free about 3 years ago when I bought my iPhone XS. It’s not connected to a cell plan but it still works great as a camera and on an Internet connection for creating and sharing content. I had it set up mounted to make selfies while I drove. I later realized that I didn’t like the way I had to do a freeze frame of the video to insert my commentary so I’m likely to discontinue it. The other is my new iPhone 13 Pro, which I use for handheld selfie videos while out of the truck. I’ll likely set this up to record occasional selfies behind the wheel. Two cameras is enough. It’s not like I’m flying a helicopter or anything. ;-)

I compile the video content on my MacBook Air — the same one I was “forced” to buy back in August or September while I was cruising on the Great Lakes. It’s a better machine than the 2yo MacBook Pro I’d been using so I got that machine all clean up and sent it back to Apple for a $380 gift card and set this one up as my main laptop. I use an app called Screenflow, which seems to work fine and gives me picture-in-picture capabilities. It also does a great job optimizing the rendered files so they’re remarkably small, even at 4K resolutions.

The main hurdle I’ve got is to get the video uploaded. My laptop uses my iPhone or iPad as a hotspot and Verizon has managed to degrade hotspot upload/download speeds to the point where it’s nearly impossible to share video. So I fooled it today by using AirDrop to send the finished file from my laptop to my iPhone and then upload it to YouTube from there. (It’s still taking quite a while, though, so maybe Verizon fooled me into thinking that would work?) I may have to upload these in batches in the future, possibly when taking up table space at a Starbucks or other WiFi hotspot with decent bandwidth. But since I don’t expect to see those more than once a week or so, don’t you expect to see these posts much more often than that.

That said, here’s the video:

I also want to say again that I’m just a few (11 as of this morning) YouTube Channel subscribers short of being able to do livestream videos from a mobile device. If you’re not a subscriber, why not?