Tag Archives: sky

Spirit Lake

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At the foot of Mt. St. Helens.

Last August’s road trip took me as far north as Mount St. Helens. I was extremely disappointed by the way the U.S. Government has turned a natural disaster site into an income-producing tourist attraction that requires a special National Parks Pass or admission fee for entrance. (Odd that a pass that can get me into parks like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone won’t work at a volcano in Washington State.)

The last time Mike and I were at Mt. St. Helens was not long after its eruption back in the 1980s. The only approach to the site was from the southeast. So after taking a helicopter tour from the north side and being turned away at the visitor’s center, I drove around to the south side to see it the way I had years before, from Windy Ridge. Because there were no gift shops on that side, there weren’t many tourists and there were no rangers checking wrist bands. The experience was much more pleasant.

Spirit LakeI took this shot of Spirit Lake from the parking area. Logs still float on the lake, but the photo features a nice reflection of the mountain and sky. Mt. St. Helens is to the left, out of the photo. When the volcano erupted, the side of the mountain slid down into the lake as a blast leveled all the trees in every direction for miles around.

The volcano was smoking when I visited in August 2005. But the area all around was lush and green — quite a difference from the ash-covered landscape we’d seen years before. I made quite a few stops along the way to Windy Ridge, taking time for short hikes and photos.

If you ever get up that way, skip the Visitor Center and its “interpretations” on the north side. Come in from the southeast to Windy Ridge and see the sights without the tourists.

Mount St. Helens, volcano, Windy Ridge, Spirit Lake

I Turn Down Work

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It’s too hot to fly!

I got a call yesterday afternoon. The caller wanted to know if I was doing any more tours that day. A lot of people think that Flying M Air has a helicopter tour schedule. They don’t realize that we do tours on demand, by reservation.

Although I’d done a tour early that morning — for some smart passengers who understood that when I say “the earlier, the better,” 7 AM is a good time — I had nothing booked for the afternoon. I didn’t want anything booked for that afternoon. It was over 100° out (in the shade) and my helicopter doesn’t have air conditioning. Even with all the doors off and flying 500 feet above the ground, it would still be over 100° in the cabin in the sun. So I told the caller that we were done flying for the day. That it was just too darn hot. That we didn’t fly after 10 AM in the summer months and would be available after 8:30 AM on Monday.

She sounded a little disappointed and I’m not sure if she’ll call back. But I’m not so desperate for revenue hours that I have to put myself through hell just to make a few bucks. And, frankly, I don’t think my passengers would have enjoyed it much, either. Summer thermals tend to make things bumpy and uncomfortable.

An interesting side note here: Silver State Helicopters, which operates flight schools in the Phoenix area, won’t fly when the temperature exceeds 104°. They say it’s because the performance charts only go that high — the same reason that was used to close down Sky Harbor one day when the temperature reached 124° years ago (I believe jet performance charts go up to 50° C while Robinson’s go up to 40° C). I’m not terribly worried about that. Performance can be extrapolated and it isn’t as if I’m going to operate at max gross weight. But it also isn’t as if I want to operate when it’s that hot.

I really do need to get out of here for the summer.

Ground Zero, In Passing

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I finally pass by an area I’d been avoiding.

We passed by Ground Zero in New York City the other day while going to the movies. I’d been avoiding lower Manhattan — something that’s pretty easy to do when you live 2,400 miles away and visit New York infrequently — since the World Trade Center’s twin towers disappeared from the skyline.

Ground ZeroBut Sunday I was there.

It’s amazing how much you can see of the area with the buildings gone. I could see Trinity Church and the old Woolworth Building (the tallest building in the world for 13 years, topped by the Chrysler Building and later the Empire State Building in 1934). We were on the west side of Ground Zero; evidently, the tourist stuff is on the east side. From our view, it just looked like a big construction site. Very big — four city blocks. Of course, I didn’t get a picture of it from the theater’s windows; the shot here is from the car.

I feel kind of weird about the way Ground Zero is being treated as a tourist attraction. I hope most people are very respectful to the site in remembrance of the thousands who died there. I don’t think that people who don’t know New York can understand the significance of the attack and buildings’ collapse. Lower Manhattan is occupied by literally hundreds of thousands of people on a typical workday morning. Those buildings were each 1/4 mile tall. If they had fallen any way but straight down, the body count and damage to New York would have been far, far worse. Any New Yorker can tell you how lucky the city is that the buildings came almost straight down. And any New Yorker who was in lower Manhattan that day can tell you, without exaggeration, how lucky they are to be alive.

Sedona Update

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Good news for pilots flying into Sedona.

I did a Sedona charter today. It was a birthday gift for one of my passengers. His girlfriend had me fly the two of them up to Sedona where they went on a Jeep tour with the Pink Jeep Tour company there. Then I flew them back to Wickenburg.

Both flights were great — smooth and uneventful. I flew the helicopter from Wickenburg to downtown Prescott, then skirted around the south end of Prescott’s airspace over Prescott Valley, crossed over Mingus Mountain at the 89A pass, flew past Jerome, then toured the red rocks north of there all the way into Sedona. Although I expected the flight back to be hot and bumpy, I was very pleased to be wrong. Bumpier and hotter than the trip out — yes. But not too bumpy or hot to enjoy. We flew from Sedona past the south end of Cottonwood, over the tail end of Mingus Mountain, over the weird mountain town of Crown King, and straight into Wickenburg. Total flight time: 1.7 hours.

The good news for pilots flying into Sedona is this:

First, the restaurant, which was supposed to close for good in May (this month) is remaining open. So you can still get breakfast or lunch or dinner on that wonderful shady patio or indoors — with red rock views either way. I had lunch there today while waiting for my passengers and really enjoyed a nice, leisurely meal in the shade, with a cool, comfortably breeze keeping me feeling refreshed.

Second, the terminal now has wireless Internet access. So if you show up with a laptop or other computing device that uses wireless networking, you can hop on the net, do your e-mail, or surf to your heart’s content. That’s a nice thing when you find yourself waiting a few hours for your passengers.

It was a nice day out — the first flight since my surgery — and it felt good to be in the sky again. I had great passengers and I think they really enjoyed themselves.

Sedona is still my favorite charter.

The Grand Tetons

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A road trip photo.

Back in August, I took a 16-day road trip in my “midlife crisis” car (a 2004 Honda S2000). In a way, it was a midlife crisis trip. The goal was to find a place we could live in the summer and still make some kind of living or, better yet, a new year-round place to live. I traveled as far west as the Oregon coast and as far north as Mount St. Helens. I covered a few hundred miles a day, making up my route as I drove, finding a cheap place to sleep most nights and splurging for a nicer place on a few nights. (I wanted to spend $100 or less per day on average.) I saw more of this country in those 16 days than most people see in a lifetime.

I took my laptop with me and documented the trip in my old blog. Those entries haven’t made it to this new site for two reasons: (1) importing them with their images is time consuming, tedious work and I can’t stand much of that for long and (2) I’ve decided to expand on them and turn them into a travel book.

The Grand TetonsI’d woken that morning in Montana, at a friend’s house, and had taken the scenic route south, through Yellowstone National Park. South of that park, I reached Jackson Lake with this late afternoon view of the Grand Tetons.

I like this picture, primarily because of the color: blue. It’s funny how you can look at something and percieve it a certain way, then point a camera at it and get a picture that shows something you didn’t really see. In this case, it’s the color blue. Of course, I noticed the sky was blue and the water was blue, but in this shot, the mountains look blue, too.

“Of purple mountains majesty”? Perhaps this is what they were talking about.

Yellowstone, Tetons, Montana, Jackson