Iron Goat Caboose

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The old path of the railroad across Stevens Pass has been abandoned and replaced by a new route that is lower down and has tunneled through sections of the mountains to avoid the tricky climb that was previously required.  This abandoned right of way has been turned into a trail called the Iron Goat Trail.  Since it is a railroad trackbed, it is not a steep trail which means that a substantial portion of it is actually wheelchair accessible!

Our day out did not include time for hiking but the trail looks well worth exploring and, come the spring, we shall be making a specific trip to go hiking.  We did stop at the parking lot to read the signs about the history of the pass.  Also, an old caboose is kept at the entrance to the trail and I figured it deserved a shot!

Puffs Across the Wing

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The day I left London was a bit damp which made for a bit of vapor on departure.  I was sitting almost directly over the wing.  I couldn’t see in to the inlet but I could see vapor puffs in front of the inlet at lower speeds anyway.  As we rotated and climbed out, there was plenty of vapor puffing over the upper surface, aided by climbing through a few patches of cloud.  I had the video running the get a view of the moisture and here is what I got.

 

Sunset on the Mountain Tops

The view from our hotel in Whistler towards the mountains was really pretty but never more so than when the sun was setting.  A couple of evenings I thought I should get a shot but was either elsewhere or too slow.  I did manage to get out there one time though, although I was still a little late.  The shadows were creeping up the lower slopes of the mountains but I still had the nice color on the summits.  The warm, evening light was really appealing and mountains look good at the best of times so this was a great scene to see.

Hello C-17s. Where Are Your Buddies?

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In this previous post, I mentioned the crews at Portland setting up for the arrival of some F-16s.  They were coming in from Texas for a week of DACT training according to the word around the ramp.  Sadly, the jets did not arrive prior to the end of the Open House.  However, they weren’t the only planes coming in.  The ground crews and support equipment arrived ahead of the jets courtesy of a pair of C-17s.  These arrived a few minutes apart and taxied in to the adjacent section of the ramp.  One jet was already unloading as the second taxied in.  They were a nice compensation for the F-16s not arriving in time.

Sunspots

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It’s been a while since I posted my pictures from the eclipse.  This is a post of a sun picture taken on that day but I took this before the eclipse got started.  I was setting up the camera and the filters and I needed to get some shots to check everything was okay before things started to happen.  At the time, I noticed the sunspots on the shot but I was distracted by other things after them and forgot.  However, it was impressive to be able to see features on the surface of the sun as I was taking a shot.

Sabreliner Testbed

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The Sabreliner is a neat little jet under normal circumstances, combining as it does the wing of the Sabre with a fuselage for passengers.  This example, that now lives in the Evergreen Aerospace Museum in McMinnville Oregon, is even better because it is a testbed.  The nose has a new radome grafted into place to allow the testing of different radar.  Meanwhile, pods can be mounted under the wings to test a variety of different sensors and electronics.  Some of these different configurations are displayed alongside the airframe.  Good to know that after years of specialized service, the aircraft will survive in the indoor comfort of the museum.

Lost Lake

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Lost Lake is a within walking distance of the center of Whistler.  The trail from the town takes you along the river.  Once you get to the lake you can take a walk around the perimeter.  There is a beach area that is at one end of the lake that was a popular spot that day.  (You can park there if you don’t feel like a walk from the town.)  While the temperatures were not that high, a couple of people were even making use of the clear skies to do some sunbathing!

We too an alternate route around one side of the lake.  A trail was named the Upper Panorama Trail so we took it.  I think we were justified in assuming that this route would give us an elevated view of the lake.  I’m not sure if there were spots that you could see the lake if you went off the trail but, from the trail itself, we were deep in the trees the entire time.  There was no view of the lake from up there.  It was a good walk though and an opportunity to walk off some of the bakery goods we had been sampling!

Lake Union Departures

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The floatplane activity on Lake Union is fun to check out, not just for an aviation geek like me, but for plenty of visitors to the city too.  I have previously gone down to the lakeshore to check them out but, one evening, while driving into the city to drop a friend off, I was coming down the road on the hill overlooking the lake when a plane took off giving an interesting alternative perspective on its departure.  I figured this needed to be explored further.

The question was where to go.  The road I had been on was not one on which stopping was practical.  Parallel roads exist but there are buildings along most of them so the view is obscured.  However, I did find a location that had a clear view of most of the lake (aside from one building that was right in the touchdown zone!  I wasn’t around for much of the traffic but I did get to see a few arrivals and departures.  Looking down on the flights and having some scenery behind them including the cityscape rather than the sky is a nice change.  I may have to try this out again at a busier time.

America’s Car Museum

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The onset of shorter days and less reliable weather (or at least weather that can be relied on to be crummy) means day trips to indoor places.  Nancy thought a trip to Tacoma to look at the LeMay collection in America’s Car Museum would be a good plan and she wasn’t wrong.  I have seen this museum many times as I drive south on I-5 but hadn’t given much thought to it before.  A couple of days before Nancy suggested it, a friend of mine back in California told me he would be going there in the spring so obviously everyone else was thinking about it but me.

The museum is a cool looking structure.  An asymmetric curved roof based one a wooden interior frame, it sits on a hillside next to the Tacoma Dome overlooking the harbor.  The museum is on multiple levels so, while the building doesn’t look to extensive, it provides a lot of space for the large collection of vehicles.  I shall be showing a few specific examples of cars from the collection in upcoming posts but, for the time being, you can get an idea of the overall museum.

The Candid Really is Russian

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The Antonov 124 is a reasonably regular visitor to the US when outsized cargo needs to be moved.  It is often commented on as being a Russian plane but, while one of the operators is a Russian company and some of the aircraft were assembled in Russia, the design and much of the production is actually Ukrainian.  Ilyushin, on the other hand, really is a Russian company.  Their IL-76 is also operated for freight services but it doesn’t show up anything like as frequently.  Consequently, when a Volga Dnepr example was scheduled in to SeaTac on a Friday afternoon, I was pretty annoyed I would miss it.  However, it ended up being seven hours late so arrived well after dark.

Departure the following day was going to be a practical proposition for me (and many others as it happened).  The weather was not going to be ideal with low cloud and rain but, when the visitor is a rarity, you don’t get to choose whether to go based on weather.  Fortunately, the departure was a lot closer to schedule than the arrival.  I drove past the cargo ramp and saw it parked up and all closed up so did wonder whether it would go on time but things were working well and they headed out.

This aircraft was the newer variant with the PS90 engines and takeoff performance was pretty good.  I had worried it would be low on the climb out and not in a good position to photograph but it climbed well and was in a good position to get a shot.  I had a big grin once it had gone as did the rest of the people waiting for it.