Easter 2013

It's Easter already in 2013, I went up to visit with Isaiah and Christi. We checked out this local resort, it has quite a view over Lake Travis.

A couple days later Heidi and I had a pretty good ride around Pace Bend. I think we went around twice. The riding is nice, the views are fairly typical of the "Hill Country".

There has not been any rain to speak of for a few months. The rocks are are a little loose and there's plenty of dust.

On the way home we stopped in at Willie Nelson's roadhouse - Poodies hilltop bar and grill for some refreshment.

We enjoyed some nice BBQ at the Salt Lick, with the Carew Family. Then hit the lake Sunday morning before the clouds rolled in. A pleasant weekend. Now I'm ready for some air.

Big Bend

Last week was Spring Break, so we took off to Big Bend National Park. The first night we stayed outside the park since camping was all full. Spring break is the busiest part of the season, camping seems first come, first served. But there is always room at the Stillwell camp, just outside the northeast of the park.

The big draw of Big Bend is hiking in the Chisos Mountains, an old volcano with  stacks of interesting geology. You drive into the crater which is the Chisos Valley, there is camping there but it is very popular. The valley is at 5400ft so it is considerably cooler than the rest of the park.

Most of the trails start from the visitors center. We chose to hike up Emory Peak. At 7825ft it's the highest in the park and has awesome views all the way up.

There's also a fair bit of shade from Oak, Pinon Pine and Cedar on the walk - which won't stop you getting sun burned, but does take the edge off the heat.

It was a pretty easy walk up and back, there is a loop that adds about 3 miles around the far side, but we were a little short on time, wanting to catch the sunset back at camp.

We stayed down at the Rio Village camp, which was nice and toasty at 1850ft. Mexico lies across the ankle deep Rio Grande.

Sunset over Boquillas del Carmen, and the hot springs just this side of the river.

The hot springs were such a delight after the stroll up the mountain. We went back in the morning to see what they looked like.

We also took a wander around around Boquillas Canyon.

It's easy to see how this place can flash flood. Huge dessert expanses draining through these narrow carved canyons going from 4000ft to 2000ft in just a few miles.

Prickly cactus near sunset.

Another day another hike, just a short one this time... Right ? Again starting from Chisos Valley.

Well maybe not as short as we thought... Somehow one way distance got confused with round trip.

No matter it was still only 5 miles and the lost mine trail was spectacular.

I think the mine was for mercury, though there's plenty of iron too.

On our way out of the park we went by the Santa Elena overlook. This is where the Rio Grande emerges from the canyon.

Rafting is offered here when there is sufficient water. Its a 6 mile canyon, I've added that to my want to do list. We camped in Terlingua Ghost town, seeing some Petroglyphs in the morning. Leaving town looking right perhaps Terlingua Ranch offers some flying opportunities? The other cliffs I saw on the way to Alpine belong to Nine-point mesa Anheuser-Busch.

February in Texas

It has been a relatively quiet February for us in Texas, mostly on account of a few pinched nerves in my back that seem to be hindering plans. I don't to this day know quite how I got them. Still We managed a nice tour along the Mission Reach trail south of San Antonio. Looking at the map, I'm not sure having north oriented other than up is a Texas thing or something I've only recently noticed, but I don't get it. It is as disorientating as having the sun in the north at midday.

Also went for a nice hike in Guadalupe River state park. It is a pleasant park but the entry fee is outstanding, $14 for two ! No wonder it was deserted. There are five loop trails in the park, it seems two of them are called loop 2, Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

We got a little dressed up for an Oscars party, that was fun, much more fun than watching it the show on TV ;) Big thanks to Kit's aunt Ruth, hostess with the most-ist (sp?)

We've also been exploring the trails in the San Marcos greenbelt.We stumbled upon this sundial. in the Spring Lake Preserve I've always been fascinated by orbital geometry, but not seen an Analemmatic_sundial before. I'm not sure this one takes into account daylight savings, but by standing in a calibrated position, the time can be read without any calculation or adjustment. It was accurate this day at 5:30pm anyway...

And we took a brief tour of Ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson's Ranch. Defininately a touristy spot, but free entry, and quite interesting. Apparently he did most of his work from this Texas White House. He also had a  beautiful runway and airforce one plane, a Lookheed Jetsatr VC140

First flight of the year.

Last Sunday in Texas we had some pretty awesome weather for January. The Blipmaps were showing 6000ft for 3pm and 4000ft for noon. This is what the sky looked like at 11am on the way to Luling. It was feeling "right". Nice wind strength and direction, about right on the humidty, the dryline seemed to be right on top of us.

I didn't waste much time setting up and getting launched. I was eager to see if reality reflected the forecast.

Joel from Thermalriders towed me up in his newly tuned up Dragonfly. We flew through some good lift on the climb, and quickly got up. I pinned off after 1700ft in another climb.

It didn't take long to get to cloudbase at 4200ft. Joel came back up and joined me for a twirl.

My goal for this flight would be home at Canyon Lake. This was the original plan as it makes the retrieve easy and the scenery that way is nicer. However it would be 28miles into a moderate quatering headwind 21km/h and the sky looked better downwind. Tempting... lets see what the sky has to offer.

This flight hadn't been done before, so I'd studied the maps carefully. There's a dropzone to avoid at Fentress, and airspace around New Braunfels and San Marcos. Then there's a good stretch of trees into the hill country. I followed the San Marcos river, not really knowing how far I would make it. 

Heidi was following along below me. I was surprized to make it to the edge of the hill country. I had almost landed once, and climbed back to 5500ft. The thermal drift was a challenge given the climb rates. However I managed to get through the gap between the airspace and just when I thought I'd be landing alongside I35, I got another climb. It was a slow one and drifting towards San Marcos.

I topped out at 4300ft, it was getting late in the day and cirrus was slowing climbs farther. I went on glide toward Canyon lake. I did get one light climb, but with the drift it didn't help much.

I landed just 6 miles short after ~3 hours in the air. Awesome for January. Many thanks to Joel at Thermalriders for the tow and Heidi for the retrieve :) 

Being tourists in London

With just a few days left of our trip we headed to London. Jessica drove us and joined us for a day. It's much easier to drop the car and take the tube in.

We rode the Piccadilly Line into Green Park just in time to see the changing of the Guard, at Buckingham Palace.

Quite a fun little show.

A short walk from there is Big Ben and the houses of Parliament.

Westminster Abby (where most royal events happen) is across the street.

And Westminster bridge gives a pretty good view of the embankment. Grabbing a few good English Pies for lunch on the south side, we walked on down passed the OXO tower and across to St Pauls Cathedral. After a quick tour we headed underground to see the Wildlife photographer of the year exhibition at the National History museum.

We managed to find time to meet up with some college friends, before hitting the streets for one final day. I had some banking to do, to my surprise and Heidi's delight my personal banker was Daniel Craig - well it looked like him anyway.

And what trip around London would be complete with stopping at the Nationl Portrait gallery? Was great to catch up with Pat and Darryl there.

From there, we jumped on a double decker bus and concluded our city tour. Stopping at the Tower of London and the bridge, and gawking at the architecture one last time before jumping a flight back to Dallas. What a whirlwind tour !

New Year 2013

High up on the check box of things to see on our trip were the London New Year Fireworks. Our plan was a little last minute and haphazard, but we pulled it off. We caught the Oxford Tube into London (which is actually a bus), that got us the about 11:15pm I think. The Streets were closed to motor traffic for 3 square miles. It was human gridlock for the last 1/2 mile. This was no surprise, 250,000 people were estimated to be in the capital to watch the display. But where to watch the 12,500 fireworks from? We ended up on a roof of Carlton House, not a place that you could really get away with going any other time. But it was overrun, by a peaceful, excitable crowd, and the nervous security guards seemed happy their direction was mostly heeded. This was the grand finale from our perspective. Quite the atmosphere I can tell you and we were still almost third of a mile from the center

It took a long time to get out of the capital, this street was one of the ones away from the center and open to vehicles, None shall pass! and it was 00:30am. 1-1-13. We eventually got home at 5am.