Marginal VFR… 110/365

This was the view from the side of the windscreen on out flight up to Eagle River this Friday…the scene is a rather deceptive one in that the clouds, while dark, were rather benign, there was no turbulence, in fact it was rather smooth, and although it was hazy and the light was falling, the visibility was still over 10 nautical miles…

I have Saturday’s and today’s images all set to go, but I am tired from the weekend and the flight home and will post a triple play including tomorrow night’s image.  I wanted to give all of you that visited while I was “on vacation” something for today, and rather than just slapping on the last three day’s work, I want to spend some time putting it all together nicely…

Both of these images are straight from the camera with no processing…something I rarely do, but I thought it worked well with these..OK actually when I tried to process them, they started to look like crap, so in their own way they were telling me to lay off…so I did…

(By the way…the instrument panel only looks like it was a bouncy ride…the exposure was too long and I moved…a shot that I would normally throw away, but in this case there was something about it I liked…)

Thanks for Visiting…

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New York, New York…

Intro…

This was my first visit to “The Big Apple” and while I was excited to visit our friends who live about an hour and a half north of there, I was a little apprehensive about going into the city itself.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not very fond of large cities (even though I went to school in downtown Chicago), and have chosen to visit but not stay if I even visit at all.  I have to admit, though, that New York has quite an endearing property to it that I find less oppressive for a large city, a lot of that having to do with the landscape (and seascape) surrounding the city and the fact that to me it has a more settled feel to it…meaning that it has been around for so much longer than any of the other large cities I have visited and the inhabitants and scenery feels more “in place”.  That all may only mean something to me if it makes sense at all, but that being said, because of that “sense” I was not only less apprehensive about being there, I actually enjoyed it and dare I say felt comfortable there.  Call it the excitement of new scenery, but I was thoroughly impressed and would not mind going back there someday…not to live of course, lets not fly off the handle here.

 

The plan for the day was to get to the city, visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and finish off the fourth with a birds-eye view of the fireworks display on the Hudson River…so as any with any trip in a new place…

Route 9 Inbound…

…We took the long way, following Route 9 and the Hudson River, stopping at a scenic overlook near West Point military base.  The cloud ceiling was right at the tops of the hills and appeared in places like smoke rising rather than the sky meeting the ground. 

 

We continued south, following the river as it led us through the small communities cut into the hillsides and forests including the home of the headless horseman…Sleepy Hollow…(as a foreword to the images following, I took them all from the front passenger seat of our trusty chariot…a 1987 GMC Safari Van…I think maybe one of the last ones on the road…)

One can almost feel the history in the towns as we rolled through them

A beautifully old cemetery that seemed to go on for miles in all directions…If we had the time I would have loved to stroll through it looking at the age of the monuments, but we had an agenda to follow so onward…

The rolling hills begin to fade a bit and the small towns begin to grow and then suddenly you are in Yonkers in a flash that almost feels like someone threw a switch. A few stoplights later we were on a highway bordered by rocky channel walls on our way into the city…

 

Next up…on foot and on the water…

Thanks for Visiting…