There is a visitor center for the Grand Coulee dam. Sadly, as with a lot of similar things, it was closed while I was there due to the virus. While I couldn’t go in, I was rather taken with the structure itself. I’m not sure when it was built but it has a bit of a 70s space age feel about it. When in the park lower down the hill, it looks a little like a flying saucer has landed above you. I bet it looks interesting when lit up at night.
I had seen some photos of the lake side of the Boeing plant at Renton with 737s parked up there. Looking on Google Maps made me think these shots were taken from the deck of the Hyatt hotel by the lake. I drive down there one time to investigate but I was not planning on hanging around and didn’t feel like paying to park in one of the lots there so skipped it. However, riding my bike down through there was a different story. I detoured to the hotel and walked up to the deck area. Turns out you get a good view of the back of the factory. Not a lot of jets parked there but a few to see. Ryanair and their affiliate Buzz in this case.
The SR520 bridge across Lake Washington provides some great views of the lake and the shoreline around it. The nice thing about riding my bike across the bridge’s cycle trail is that it means I can stop and take some photos – even if they are only with my phone. The headland leading in to the Montlake Cut seems like a great place to live when it is a warm and sunny day in Seattle.
The other end of the bridge is the location of some pretty impressive houses. It is an area that is popular with many of the tech moguls that make Seattle home. I figured it would be wrong not to take a moment to have a look at the nice houses there. Bear in mind that these houses, while very nice and next to the lake are also right next to a major highway!
Moses Lake was the last stop on my road trip. There were a few things I was hoping to see while I was there but one thing I saw I was not expecting at all. A Douglas UC-67 Dragon, a conversion of the B-23. There weren’t many built at all and I have come across a couple in museums. However, this one looks like it might be airworthy. There aren’t a ton of photos of it online but it has been shot flying a couple of years ago so I hope it is still flyable. It was very close to the fence in nice afternoon light so a great surprise to add to the day.
The Grand Coulee Dam was one of my planned stops on my trip. I had been interested to see it for a while having read a little about its history. It is a bit of a trek from home so a specific trip was not something I had planned but, since I was going to be only an hour away, I seemed like the perfect time to visit. I drove across from Brewster and the route brought me in over the hills overlooking the town and the dam. Crown Point park is situated up on the hills so I made that my first stop.
The dam is enormous. The problem with structures that large is that it is hard to appreciate their scale. You tend to see them from a distance so you can’t judge them very well. Even so, from up on the hills, you weren’t left in any doubt that this is a big structure. I was the only one up in the park aside from a guy looking to go off-roading but, since it was a Friday in Grand Coulee during a pandemic, maybe that isn’t such a shock.
Dropping down in to the dam takes you on a road that crosses the edge of the structure itself. From the road you get a view across the top of one section of the dam. Then you drop down the hill to the visitors center. A nice park area sits below the dam and this was the spot I chose for my lunch break. Looking up at the two sections of the dam, you really couldn’t get the scale. I felt like Father Ted needed to explain to Dougal about scale (reference for a few people there I’m afraid).
I had seen some images of tour buses (when tours were being run) on top of the arches at the top of the dam. The buses looked small compared to these arches and, from where I was observing, the arches looked tiny. That was the only way I could get some comprehension of the size of things. There was a little water running down the face of the dam but there wasn’t much overflowing at this time of year so no great falls of water to watch. I guess the majority of the water was going through the power generation side of things. The dam is the largest capacity generator in the US!
When things are more normal, there are light shows projected on to the face of the dam. People gather in the park and surrounding areas to watch the light show after dark. I assume this is not happening at the moment. However, the lighting rigs are down on the shoreline in the park. I imagine it might be quite a fun thing to see.
Another archive post today. When we flew through Honolulu, we had some time at the airport and, needless to say, I took some photos of the traffic. Sure, there were some familiar names but there were also some airlines I hadn’t seen before. Whether it was small props or larger jets, something a bit new and different is always appreciated. Here are some shots from our time waiting for our flights.
At the time of writing this post (not sure when it will actually get published yet) it is a year since we went to the UK for a couple of weeks. There are still quite a few topics from that trip that I have not got around to posting about. One of those was our visit to Bury St Edmunds. It was a pretty hot day when we were there as the second week of our trip turned in to quite a scorcher. I had been to Bury St Edmunds before but not for about 30 years.
As town names go, this one isn’t very imaginative. It is the town in which St Edmund is buried. I wonder how long they thought about that one. We didn’t have time to check out the whole town but just got to explore in the area around the cathedral of which more will come another time. There are ruins in the park area around the cathedral and more churches in close proximity. If you want to get your worship in, this is the place for you.
There are more modern buildings in the area too but more modern is a relative term. Still pretty old by the standards of our current home! The square looked like it was ready for a market to be held but clearly not the day we were there.
Just up the road from Brewster Airport is another collection of vintage helicopters. Monse has some even older airframes. I was a little disappointed at first because I thought that they were going to be R-5s but, when I got there, I came across a bunch of immaculate S-55s. There may have been an R-5 in there too because I could see the tail of something different. Most of what I could see was S-55s, though.
Each of them looked in fantastic condition. They all had individual paint schemes that looked flawless so there was little to be disappointed about. I could shoot what I could see from the road outside the entrance to the driveway. Again the signage did not encourage visitors so I decided against walking up the driveway to see whether they would let me shoot the collection up close. It certainly would be good to visit in more detail though.
Here are some old Japanese rail vehicles. These are part of the SCMaglev museum in Nagoya that I visited when I was in Japan last summer. The museum has a great selection of Shinkansen equipment across the generations but it also has a lot of other rail vehicles from long ago. The vehicles clearly look old from the outside but the interiors are really an interesting comparison with what you see these days. The amount of wood in the paneling and the materials of the seating are definitely of their time. I was quite amused by the fans mounted on the ceiling. Obviously pre-air conditioning days with these cars and so a bit of air circulation was all you could hope for. Knowing how incredibly hot it gets in Japan during the summer, they would not have done much for the riders I would have thought. I wonder whether it was as crowded in those days as it is now. If it was even close, that would have been brutal.
On one day, I had an overflight from both of the initial 777X test airframes. The second one went straight over the house in less than ideal conditions but the first came just south of us if a little higher than is sometimes the case for aircraft heading back to Boeing Field. What I noticed in time was that the moon was on the flight path. Not much of a moon to be fair but the moon nonetheless. It crossed it quite nicely!