Lic Observatory

Madalynns' first big adventure, up top of Mt Hamilton.

She expressed a desire to learn more about where she came from, so I figured I'd start from the very begining.

The road up there is pretty twisty and windy. She fared better than any of us. Although there was some possible evidence of being scared ?

The landscape up top is neat, almost European feel with the history and old community houses up there, to bad the community left.

The views from up top can be spectacular. It was a little hazy this day but better than average.

I stuck the iphone up next to the telescope and snapped a couple of pictures. The hill in the foreground is Quimby infront of downtown San Jose.

It was a nice day to sit around and take in the views. Lic Observatory offers tours, of a couple of the scopes.

On the way back we stopped for dinner at  the mt Hamilton Grandview restaurant . It's been on the to do list for a while. Sponsered by my Mum - Thanks Mum ! You'll have to try this place yourselves when you visit. Great food.

Maddy behaved herself the whole time! We questioned our choice on the way in, but it worked out great.

It's a great place to see the sunset from too.

Flying with Goldens

I had a nice flight Sunday 9 Mar, and got some nice pictures, so figured I'd share some. The local site - Ed Levin, is usually only good before a front passes, which was the situation on this day. It was unusually warm for a good day in March so my expectations were pretty low.

 I think in the picture above you can see a slanted haze layer, I think this shows where a convergence was located. Cooler moist air to the north, balmy air going up over it from the south. Likely the seabreeze effect coupled into the situation, it was a pretty weak day. We got pretty high for such weak conditions. I saw 6800'msl for a short while, but bailed out of the lift since I was getting very close to the SFO airspace.

 A few of us flew to Mission and back, Ryan on his single surface! Well it is a Freedom ;)

 On the way back I ws lucky enough to thermal back up with a whole family of golden eagles. Looked like Grandpa, Mamma, Pap and a couple fledglings, six or seven in totally all lazily circling up.

All to soon the covergence fell apart or moved, after contemplating landing on top for half an hour, I landed easily and drove down. Icing on the cake! Pretty nice day :)

Madalynn

It has been a busy month! We moved, I started a new job and Madalynn arrived a little early. Finally we have internet. Living without it is like living without electricity these days. So finally here are some pictures of beautiful young Madalynn.

It is amazing how much she has changed since these pictures already. They grow up fast !

New Year at Ano Neuvo

What better time to go to see the Elephant Seals at Ano Neuvo than New Years?

Heidis' brother and family were visiting it's a pretty spot regardless, the elephant seals are a bonus. There are only a few colonies in the world and this is mating season.

It has been really unseasonably warm and dry for a couple of weeks. Hard to complain about that - though the 4000Ib blubbery seals are having a hard time with it - getting overheated. 

I am sure that will change soon.

They can always go battle in the water like this guy.

Sometimes the water can be far away.

Some of the younger ones were still feisty. The black curve is from the binoculars I stuck my iPhone next to, which I used for all the pictures. I'm still impressed with what that little thing can do.

Elkhorn slough

Heidi and I went for a quick paddle Christmas eve.

The weather was too gorgeous to miss. It was 76'F or 24'C warm for Christmas !

We had a little visitor while in the harbor, usually Otters are very shy, but this critter just climbed up in to the boat.

Kayaking Tomales Bay.

Sundays adventure was to paddle from Millerton Point to Lawsons Landing, just inside the mouth of Tomales Bay. High tide at 10:30am at 6ft, low tide at 4:30pm at -1ft (about as big as they get in California). Weather was forecast to be perfect - warm, light wind NE 3-5knots... 

Poised for action at Millerton Pt. Carmela, John, Krista, Heidi and I had staged a car at Lawsons Landing take out. I figured a 6mph paddle with the 3mph tide 13.2 miles would take a little over 2 hours. We could stop, picnic, take lots of pictures and walk up and see the elk and float around watching the harbor seals and myriad seabirds.

We stopped in at Shell beach first - the water was glass on the way over, but there was a little evidence of a sea-breeze building.

After a sandwich and yummy cookie we reviewed the plan. One of the kayaks we had with us was an inflatable kayak/ raft hybrid. It didn't hold sufficient speed or track well and was already tough going in the headwinds that were building. We would have to split.

Heidi and I would head for the car and Carm, John and Krista would either head down as far as they wanted, with us picking them up on the return, or paddle around and head back for the car.

The sea-breeze picked up to a 15mph headwind. With the sea breeze, the temperature dropped from 68'F to 56'F, pretty ugly for the scenic tranquil lazy kayaking I had promised. Those darn weather people ! We had 9 miles to go and 3 hours of sunlight. We were averaging 3mph. Yikes - this was going to be a grunt !

Not much time to stop, though we had to a few times to drain the kayak, the chop was pretty bad. Once we made Hog Island, the wind calmed and we were able to average a better speed and catch some time back up. There were loads of seals on the sand banks begging to have their photo taken, but our hands and feet were frozen, so we trucked on. We did catch John on the radio though, all accounted for and warming up at Nicks Cove. Good to know.

We reached Lawsons Landing at dusk, hurriedly packed, loaded and started thawing out on the way back to meet the others.

Quite a paddle, there is really too much to see here, even on the perfect day. I think next time we will plan on at least an over-nighter.

Flying in the freezing air.

We had some record breaking cold temperatures in the bay area last week. Along with that usually comes some good flying and clear air.

Which means good clear pictures. I was hoping for some snow shots but only Mt Hamilton got a dusting.

Saturday was considerably colder than Friday. At launch it was barely 32'F during the day, and at 5200ft cloudbase it was 20'F.

When Zac asked if I wanted to go cross country to the south, my fingers were frozen stiff and I was pretty uncomfortable. I declined thinking I would, top land and grab my bar mitts. I had dressed pretty warmly otherwise, below 3500ft I was OK I opted to just punt around. Setting the small upwind task to fly over where we are staying in Fremont.

Getting down was a challenge, it was got dark at 5pm and everywhere around the LZ was still going up at 400fpm. I landed with my sunglasses in my mouth. Broke down quickly and went and got Zac from Hollister (50 miles south).

Yosemite weekend get away.

This passed weekend Heidi, Carmela and I headed over into the Sierra foothills. We took Kayaks, bikes, hiking shoes and a couple of gliders. With the intention of using all three. We put the kayaks in the Toulomne River, just below La Grange. It would be really fun on river kayaks. In our Ocean beasts we were restricted to a small but pretty section of the river.

The next day I wanted to show Heidi around Yosemite valley. We biked around the scenic spots, parking at the trail-heads and doing some short hikes. Starting at Bridleviel Falls. Which is pretty dry right now.

Then we rode up to Mirror Lake and hiked the loop trail there. There's a nice view of half dome, funny how small it looks through the fish eye lens, it  is almost 5000ft vertical from there.

The lighting was nice around there that time of day, which was good as the frost never broke all day in the shaded curry village.

While Mirror lake was completely dry some springs were still trickling, allowing some green areas. From there were rode around to Happy Isles and hiked up to Vernal Falls.

The next day, a few folks took flight at McClure. It was better than I expected, I think Jay squeeked out 45 mins.

Great to see the McClure crowd again.