In the glade down near the river in Bloedel Reserve, there is a tree that is super gnarly looking. The center of it seems to have been broken apart and damaged over time but the tree still seems to be doing fine. It looks very different depending on the angle from which you look at it. I think this could be the sort of tree that someone would incorporate in a fairy tale!
No shock to any regular reader that I found a way to photograph another Avanti. Just some good fortune about when it showed up at Boeing Field and that the light was playing ball when it had been rainy for a good portion of the time. I was able to be there to catch it and would have loved to have been there for departure too, but you take what you can get.
During our trip to the UK, we met up with our friends Mark and Rosemary. They suggested we meet at Hinton Ampner in Hampshire. Being sensible people, we started out at the local pub for lunch before heading into the grounds of the estate. I didn’t know anything about Hinton Ampner but it was a delightful spot to explore. The grounds were really lovely to wander around. There were the more ornamental gardens near the house but there were paths around the estate which showed off just how lovely the rolling hills of Hampshire can be.
The house also has a café – of course it does – so we stopped off there to sample the goodies after strolling around the grounds. It was spring so the flowers were out in parts of the garden. There was also a local church in the estate since you wouldn’t want to have to go far if you are the local landowner!! What a lovely spot to spend some time and always great to catch up with good friends.
I was clearing out some old shots to try and clean up some hard drive space. As I ran through some of them, I found some shots I took at Seattle Tacoma International during a visit. We were heading out to a part of the airfield to look at where some future work may be undertaken. As we drove across the ramp, I did grab a few shots of the aircraft as they taxied around and also as some were departing. It is fun to shoot from a ramp as you get a very different perspective on things.
Earlier in the year, we made an afternoon visit to Wisley – the headquarters of the Royal Horticultural Society. I have posted about it previously but, this post is about some of the really cool looking plants that they have. That is what you would expect for a horticultural society, of course. Some of them are really fascinating looking plants so here are some shots.
During Seafair, the USN Growlers from Whidbey Island did a display earlier in the schedule. Once they were done, the jets headed home in midafternoon. They didn’t have a long trip home so getting back to base was probably a simple call. What made it better was that they undertook a section departure and the view from the tower was really cool. The tricky thing about a section departure from a photographic point of view is which plane to track. Which one looks dominant in the shot early on and which is dominant later in the pass? It changes but tracking is harder to switch. Small problem, I know, but a little tricky.
Last year, when we made our trip to Kelowna, we stopped en route for lunch at a town called Hope. It is a small town and surrounded by mountains which makes for quite a distinctive view. There is a large park in the center of the town and the place we had lunch faced this park. The town was used for some filming for the Rambo First Blood movie and, when I happened to see a clip of this recently, I recognized the location immediately. Apparently, the town has some statues of the actors, but we didn’t see those while we were there.
Plenty of airlines switch equipment around on routes as the demand ebbs and flows. One that seems to do this more than most when it comes to flights to Seattle is Asiana. Their long-haul fleet includes Boeing 777-200ERs, Airbus A350-900s and Airbus A330-300s and all of them seem to appear. The A330s are not as regular as they used to be but you never really know whether it is going to be an A350 or a 777 at any point. Here is a selection of images I have got over time of the three types as they arrive and depart from SEA.
Two years in a row, I have seen this in Juanita Bay Park. There are some trees that have some red berries on them in the fall and the crows seem to love them. They can flock to the trees in large numbers sometimes. I assume the fruity casing of the berries is appealing as they do like them. However, when I get closer, the crows seem to get nervous. A little video to add to show one of the crows having a good chomp.
Since we have lived in the Northwest, we have had a visit from a B-29. That was Doc with Fifi’s previous visits having predated my arrival. I had seen Fifi elsewhere in the US but, when I heard that the CAF was bringing her up, I was looking forward to seeing her. She was due to arrive early in the week and then sit around until undertaking some rides at the end of the week. She was coming up from California and arriving at the end of the day, which meant I had a chance to be there.
A B-29 is not speedy so you can track her progress and know you have enough time. When they arrived, they did request an overhead break by ATC was unable to comply. When we saw her out on the approach, she seemed to be doing something odd. Apparently, they had got too close to the preceding aircraft (although it was a bizjet and she is a lot slower, so I am not sure how that happened). The result was that they broke off the approach and made an orbit before resuming the approach.
After that, things were pretty normal. She came down the approach with some nice evening light. The rumble of those engines as she came by was impressive and then she was flaring for landing. I was optimistic about trying a variety of angles the following weekend when she was due to undertake the rides. Directly under the approach path was one I had in mind. Sadly, one of the crew had to return home and they didn’t have enough for the rides to be carried out, so she sat on the ground for almost the entire visit.
