Tag Archives: washington

Return of the G-III On A Sunny Sunday Morning

A G-III is going to be of interest but when it comes on a Sunday morning when the sun is out and conditions look nice, I am going to try and be there.  This was the One Flight jet which I had seen before but I wasn’t going to pass it up because of that given how good the conditions were.  I got there in time to see it land and it parked up on the ramp a little north of me although not easy to get a shot of.  It wasn’t staying for long so I was able to catch it taxiing back out for departure and then taking off too.  Not a bad result for a start to a Sunday morning.

English Day at Exotics@RTC

I didn’t get to Exotics@RTC this year as much as I would have liked.  Sometimes the weather conspired against them and sometimes I couldn’t make it anyway.  I did mange to make some of the special days, though, and one of these was the English Day.  This tends to have more of a vintage feel to it than some of the other special days.  Yes, there are plenty of McLarens and Aston Martins but a lot of older stuff to mix it up a bit.

You get the Bentleys and Rolls (not sure how well they qualify as English anymore) and there are Jags all over the place but there are plenty of less common types and definitely a few of the ones that probably keep mechanics busy.  You have no idea how many jokes about Lucas electrical systems you can hear in the space of an hour.  Aside from these shots, I also took a little video to share with my sister on the day and have edited that down a bit to include below.

Shells, Shells and More Shells

The beach in Eastsound seems to be made up heavily of shells.  Walking across it felt like a very destructive act as the shells crunched under foot.  I don’t recall ever being somewhere that was made up of so much shell material.  It looked very attractive but I didn’t like the breakage that came with it!

Cirrus and Grand Caravan Getting In Each Other’s Way

Boeing Field is constantly operating from both runways at the same time.  The light aircraft traffic on the short runway can co-exist with whatever is underway on the main, long runway.  However, despite the clear ATC instructions, there are occasional when things don’t quite go to plan.  We had a Cirrus and a Grand caravan on approach to the parallel runways.  I am not certain who was at fault, but from my angle, it appeared that the Cirrus was drifting off towards the wrong runway.  It corrected its path but not before the pilot of the Grand Caravan decided that things were not looking good and went around.  It didn’t take them long to get back around the pattern and the second approach was incident free.  I don’t know whether the controllers ended up talking to either crew or not.

Slapped Around The Head But Still Swallowed

When watching the herons hunting in Juanita Bay, you never know exactly what they are going to catch.  Something like a stickleback will be a relatively easy thing for them to swallow once they have caught it.  On one occasion, though, a heron caught something a little longer.  I am not good with different fish so can’t tell you what it was but it had a long body and a tail with some power.  The heron had the front of the fish in its beak but the back end was still flailing around.  The heron was hoping to win the battle but the fish made sure to give it some healthy whacks around the head before it finally succumbed.

Kitsap Ferries

A variety of ferry operators have made their way on to the blog over time.  Today I get to add a new one for me.  I was taking a WSF ferry to Bainbridge Island and, as we were departing Seattle’s Colman Dock, some Kitsap Ferries services were also arriving and departing.  The light angles weren’t ideal but I figured I would add to my collection of ferry shots anyway.  Maybe I will go back deliberately at some point in the future to get some better shots.

What Spooked All Of The Gulls?

Just off Cattle Point on San Juan Island, there is a small island which, on the day we were visiting, was very popular with a load of gulls.  While we were standing, looking in that direction, all of the gulls took off at once and were circling for a few minutes before they settled down again.  I had assumed that a bird of prey was nearby to cause them to get airborne.  There are plenty of eagles in the area.  However, I couldn’t make out anything specific that had caused them to be startled.  Maybe just one of them decided to take off and the rest followed just in case!

A Marine Corps Bonus Package

One weekend, I was at Boeing Field for a visiting warbird.  I was pleasantly surprised to see some US Marine Corps helicopters across the field too.  A combination of UH-1Y Venoms and AH-1Z Vipers were on the ramp.  I had no idea if or when they would fly.  However, luck was on my side as a Venom/Viper pair fired up and launched on a training mission.  The rest stayed on the ramp while I was there but this pair taxied out to the main runway and then departed past my location.  A nice extra!

Sun On The Seminary

Despite having lived in the area for over five years, for some reason, we had never been to St Edward State Park before.  We went for a walk there that will get a separate post.  In the center of the park is the old Seminary building which has now been converted into a hotel.  With a nice sunny day to light it, it looked like a pretty interesting structure.  No doubt, it has some interesting history too!

Killdeer Versus The Worm

While I was down at Juanita Bay one weekend, a killdeer was hanging out on a muddy flat near me. It was busy extracting worms from the mud to snack on.  The worms were not totally onboard with this plan and they were doing their best to stay in the mud.  Some times the killdeer won the struggle and sometimes the worm did!