With two sites in the greater Tucson area, we set up for a two night stay. I always prefer the multi-night stays on these runs, as means a little bit of relaxation compared to the point-to-point running that seems to make up the majority of our trips. It makes the mornings a little easier too, as we aren't forced to repack everything, and to ( Read more... )

We bivouacked in the town of Sierra Vista, a midsized town at the gates of Ft. Huachuca, an army base that seems to house a number of smaller Army outfits. I realized I'd seen many mentions of this base in the pages of Aviation Week, as they are hosting a test of a tethered aerostat, a sort of moored mini-blimp that lofts a radar set to a great ( Read more... )

Getting ready in Globe to start our run south to our next site, I found a correction from my Dad to my previous post. My Grandmother, it turns out, did not teach in Globe. She attended grade school in Globe before the First World War! Riding to school on a donkey, no less! I had to stop to fit my head around that concept. Way back in the ( Read more... )

Field Day 2: The Superstitions

We did two sites today, starting out of Mesa/Phoenix and on the road by 7, very unDouglike. The first site was in a state park in a place called Queen Valley. The desert is much greener than I thought it would be. This might be the usual state of things for this time of year; after all, it has been at least fhirty ( Read more... )

Now that the northern world is starting to warm up again, and the days begin to lengthen into useable days, it's time for the crack Air Quality Group maintenance teams to venture back forth into the world on our early season maintenance loops. This morning finds me high above Vegas in rather bumpy skies, headed back to Phoenix to begin a week-long ( Read more... )

Being a stream of consciousness entry, written continuously on a run to within sight of the border:

A beautiful day to fly, launching to the north, then break right angling towards the foothills east of Sactown. So much to see, so many people to wave to as I fly over. Wave Dow towards Deanna down there somewhere. Up and over the freight yards of ( Read more... )

So far on this trip, we've been traveling in what I would consider to be the Pacific Northwest, primarily in my way of looking at it because we were in the Snake River watershed. The Snake is the main tributary of the Columbia, and so after it travels the length of its namesake plain, turns north to run half the west side of Idaho, and then ( Read more... )

Day 4: Craters of the Moon National Monument

As promised, our next stop brought us to the Craters of the Moon. This lovely National Monument was discovered, and first claimed for America by Neil Armstrong in 1969, and was explored by several teams of astronauts over the next few years. This, as every one knows, was the culmination of the Apollo ( Read more... )

Today, we did a little dash over the border into Northern Nevada, which seems a little odd to me, but actually it is really only about 60 miles south of Twin Falls. Our destination was a tiny town by the name of Jarbridge, which lies on the southern edge of a pretty impressive little mountain range of the same name. The site was only 90 road ( Read more... )

So, the next morning started foggy in Stanley, which was a disappointment, as I'd been looking forward to getting a few photos of those mountains front lit in the morning light. But, it wasn't surprising, given the previous evening's theatrics and all the moisture it left behind. I'd also been told that Stanley could get cold even in high summer ( Read more... )