Pima Air and Space Museum

Yay!  I figured out how to load photos again after Windows 10 was reconfigured.  I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson last week.  Very cool!  They have a large collection of airplanes mostly ranging from the 1930s to the present day.  This is an F-4 Phantom...it was the primary fighter jet during my Navy days in the 1970s.  Land or carrier based.  Still used in some countries.

The F-14 succeeded the F-4 beginning in the 1970s, and remained in wide usage in the US forces til around 2000.

This is the SR-71 Blackbird, a spy plane used for several decades beginning in the 1960s.

A Mig-21, staple fighter of the Soviet air force.  This airplane was pitted against the F-4 in Vietnam...and also in the Middle East.

This massive airplane is a B-52.  It's too big to fit in a hangar so it's parked outside.  The wingspan is close to a football field in length.

A massive transport plane used by NASA, known as the "Super Guppy".

This ol' prop plane was actually Air Force One from 1961 to 1965, so JFK and LBJ rode it.  A later AF1 used by LBJ is on display at his ranch in Texas.

The classic WWII bomber, the B-17.  This was the heavy duty bomber the US used to bomb Germany from 1943-45.  It was tough duty.  The airplane was not pressurized or heated, so the aviators flying it at 25 to 30 thousand feet had to use oxygen masks and wear extreme cold weather gear against temperatures of 25 to 50 degrees below zero F.  It was extremely hazardous...the majority of bombers were eventually shot down by German fighters or antiaircraft fire.  Many airmen who parachuted out of their planes were killed on the ground by fanatical Germans; the rest went to prison camps.  

The tail section of a B-17.  The gunner was isolated from the rest of the crew and had rather flimsy defenses against enemy fighters.  Definitely hazardous duty.  Downright heroic, I reckon.  

Crewmen usually decorated their airplanes with nose art, more often than not in the form of comely ladies.  

A B-29.  This is the airplane that bombed Japan late in WWII.  It was an improved version of the B-17 with a pressurized cabin.  The atomic bombs were dropped from B-29s.

A P-51 Mustang, generally considered the best fighter airplane of WWII.  Even though it was a prop plane it could fly well over 400 MPH.  This particular airplane was flown by Louis Curdes.  Blow up the pic and you can see inscriptions for the airplanes he shot down.  In Europe, he downed several German planes and one Italian aircraft.  He was then shot down and imprisoned in Italy, but escaped and resumed flying in the Pacific theater against the Japanese, and shot down one of their aircraft.  If I remember the story correctly, the American flag on Curdes' airplane came to be there when, while flying a mission, he came upon a US airplane running out of fuel and heading toward a Japanese force.  Curdes instructed the plane to ditch in the ocean, which it did, and then he radioed for units to come and rescue the downed aviators.  This was successfully done, and for guiding the US airplane to ditch in the ocean, Curdes apparently got credit for downing a US plane, though in a completely friendly situation.

Coasting to Pismo

Last week I began my annual Christmas migration to Arizona with a jaunt down the coast to Pismo Beach.  It was a crisp, fresh day, with rather substantial surf along the way.  Here a wave crashes over a rock near Lucia, on the Big Sur coast.

Foam mass.

The elephant sloats are, well, sloating out on the beach.  The females are starting to give birth...there were a few pups about.  Many more to follow in the coming weeks.

Wave crashes over a rock at Pt Piedras Blancas.  The rock is at least 30 feet high.

Morro Rock, from the Cayucos pier.

Windblown spray from a crashing breaker.

Looking at a wave from behind and above on the Cayucos pier, you can see a brief rainbow if the light is right.

Gulls eye view of a Cayucos breaker.

I stayed at the Best Western Shore Cliff, my usual Pismo haunt.  Had a good view of the incoming swells from my veranda.

Sunset at Pismo.  Not visible in the pic are several dozen pelicans hanging out on the slope below the gazebo.

Surf's Up!

This winter has already been stormier than most in this decade.  We had a good high surf event on Friday Dec 11 that coincided with a high tide.  Not a king tide per se,but the surf made it a de facto king, I reckon.  This is at Del Monte Beach by the Best Western...major wave breach of the beach!

Bird cruising, breaker crashing.

Tons of water thunder down.  a bit of wind blows mist off the top.

Probably about a 15 foot breaker.  Seas reached 29 feet the night before at buoy 42, at the mouth of Monterey Bay.

Now I'm at Carmel Point, where mountains of foam prevailed as a squall approached.  There were three surfers working the monster waves.

Surfer doesn't want to get caught under this!  Splash is at least 25 feet above the water.

The surf breaks by The Cypress Tree at Carmel.

Carmel River Beach is always a good spot to check out high surf...the ocean bottom drops off abruptly just a few yards from the shore and the waves really pile up.  This one is close to 20 feet high, breaking no more than 50 feet offshore.  Water made it into the parking lot for the first time in years.

A sunbreak graces the turbulent sea.

2015 Travels

Last year I was gone for the holidays and didn't send anyone a Christmas letter, and I'll be in Arizona again this year, so I wanted to get something out before I left.  Travel this year was a bit limited compared to previous years.  I will wind up spending 140 nights away from home...below the ten year average of 155 since I retired in 2006.  And I only visited three time zones this year...Pacific, Mountain, and Hawaiian.  That may be a ten year low.  Still, there are of course countless fine places in those three zones, and I saw a good many this year.  In March I went to Las Vegas and Tucson, and enjoyed some hiking in Sabino Canyon near Tucson.

In May I visited the Southwest again.  The day I went to Arches National Park, there were heavy thunderstorms...a bit unusual for that time of year.  The dramatic weather created unusual photo ops, such as this waterfall, which only flows for a few hours now and then...from the top to bottom of the pic is probably over 100 feet.

I visited my friends Chuck and Kathy in the Denver area, and this was the scene on May 10.  They had 5 1/2 inches of snow overnight...the most fresh snow I'd seen since I left Denver in 1990.  A beautiful novelty.

In August I visited the Canadian Rockies.  About a mile from my cabin I found one of the locals having dinner.  I actually visited or at least drove through ten national parks on this trip, ranging from Yosemite and Yellowstone to Banff and Jasper (where bruddah elk was chowing down).

On the parks trip, I made my first visit to Calgary in 43 years.  There have been, a few new buildings constructed since then.  There were robust thunderstorms while I was there, making for great light.  I also got my car washed very well...but not damaged...by an intense burst of pea sized hail.  

Sometimes the Canadian Rockies defy description.  You just take a deep breath and marvel at the splendour.  This is Peyto Lake, between Banff and Jasper.

Totally different but equally fine is Haleakala, on Maui.  Spent half of November on the island.

Surf's up on the coast between Kahului and Hana!

Stayed at a nice condo at Napili, between Lahaina and Kapalua.  This was the view from my lanai.  Fine spot for happy hour, enjoyed with my friends Suzanne, Dick, and Wilma.