We did the Escalante Natural Bridge hike. Nothing strenuous. 4.2 miles round trip with 5 river crossings. Almost the whole trail is sandy and the river crossings are as well. Very easy on the feet.


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A few days late, but last Thursday I got out to finally fly my plane after balancing the prop. So much better! I wasn't sure where to go but decided to go fly the race course that Dee would be running the next day. It's a 100 mile race with nearly 22,000' of vertical. She did awesome and posted a. Ew personal best: roughly 32.5 hours. I joined her on the last 25 and Adam joined us for the last 8 in muddy, slippery conditions.

Anyway, I also wanted to get some footage to see how my new iMac would handle video right from the Drift. It worked awesome! So I created this little video showing the terrain Dee would be running.

https://youtu.be/G3l4fVHIPGc








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Run 100 miles? Don't you guys know about dirt bikes over there? Look at all that great dirt bike trail you just ran right past.

Haha! It would be a lot faster!


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Well, I didn’t make HSF this year. Seems Dee was done camping for the year and, with the kids out of school, I told her to pick what they wanted to do. The kids have gotten into Harry Potter recently, so off we went to SoCal to visit Universal Studios and the Harry Potter World. In all, 10.5hours of flying and, despite not getting the tires off of pavement, it was a fun trip.



Lake Mead


Fuel and dinner break in Boulder City.








Wand shopping.






Kids feeding starfish.


Beach time.






Fosters for burger night.


Inflight lunch was Subways.


SoCal desert.


Solar farms outside of Vegas.


Sunset at Delta.





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Grassstrippilot wrote: Solar farms outside of Vegas.

I worked for a couple days on a solar energy facility near Daggett, east of Barstow, back in the early 80's.
A shitload of parabolic mirrors mounted on posts
(the site looked like an abandoned drive-in movie theater during construction, without the mirrors)
all computerized to track the sun and focus the reflected sunlight onto solar panels mounted on a central tower.
I believe the heat transfer medium was oil heated in these panels, piped down to a heat exchanger where the hot oil boiled water,
which in turn powered a steam turbine which produced electricity.
Sounds kinda like a Rube Goldberg contraption, but since these facilities appear to be the same sort of design it must work OK.

This last Friday I got to take a good friend, who also is a pilot, to do some backcountry flying in Utah. It was his first exposure to it. It was a beautiful evening, especially when it got close to sunset.











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I've always wanted to do some late season camping in Utah and this weekend, with the awesome weather, I got my chance. More pics to come but here is the time lapse sunrise from yesterday morning.

I've always wanted to do some late season camping in Utah and this weekend, with the awesome weather, I got my chance...although an issue with my alternator almost ruined our plans. We had a blast exploring a new canyon, found more petroglyphs that we somehow managed to miss before, learned some Wild West history and saw an arch. 19 degrees right before sunrise but we had plenty of wood and gear to keep us warm.

Loose wire.


On our way with the essentials packed.


We met this family there that had hiked in. They thought it was cool, but cheating, to watch us fly in.


Sunset


Sunrise at camp.


Cooking breakfast in camp.



Checking out the petroglyphs.




Some cool Wild West history.


Hiking up the canyon to see a natural bridge.



Awesome time in an awesome place with awesome people.


Wish I could do this every weekend.


Homeward bound.





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Another nice trip. Pretty interesting area and what a lifestyle over a hundred years ago.

180Marty wrote:Another nice trip. Pretty interesting area and what a lifestyle over a hundred years ago.

No kidding! I can see why the bad guys went to hide back in there though.


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Thanks for sharing another great adventure. I love S. Utah, its usually the destination of my first and last camping trips of the year.

I’ve not done a ton of camping...at least at different locations down south. I’m hoping to do more, maybe even later this year.


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Today I had the pleasure to have lunch with a fellow 205 owner, Christian Evans, and then go do some backcountry flying. We had so much fun and talked so much that I forgot to take very many pictures but I did get some video. Don’t forget to put in HD.




https://youtu.be/sDhKG6geTkQ


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How are you ever going to top last summers adventure to Alaska with the family? That was fun to follow along.

Kurt

Well, it will be hard. I’m trying to convince Dee I need to do a guys trip this summer back to Alaska. She said I should take a year off. I said I’d put it squarely in the “undecided” column![emoji3].

However, she suggested a Yosemite, west coast up to the San Juan Islands and back through Idaho. Not Alaska by any means, but still a fun trip. One of these years we plan on doing the east coast. Still not Alaska though!


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Yup. I’ve done one of the 600’ ones. Really no need to do it again. The only place I wish there was a longer strip that I would use is on the northwest side up high. They’ve notched out a couple up there but they’re short like the rest. Otherwise I can reach everywhere I need to or want to go with the original two.


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Think about a trip out to the Midwest, maybe Oshkosh then northern Minnesota and Michigan and over to New England. Just a thought.

Kurt