High Point, New Jersey lies at 1,803 feet MSL and is ranked #40 in elevation among US Highpoints. This, the third US Highpoint of my 2004 cross-country drive from Montana to Connecticut. This is another walk-up and is located in High Point State Park and features a 200-foot obelisk that was sadly closed when we … Read more
Hawkeye Point, Iowa lies at 1,670 feet MSL and is ranked #42 in elevation among US Highpoints. Hawkeye is located on a farm in southwest Iowa. This was my second highpoint during a cross-country trip with Teewinot and “Nancy.” This is a “jump out of the car, take a photo, leave” type of place. The … Read more
Black Elk Peak, South Dakota lies at 7,242 feet MSL and is ranked #15 in elevation among US Highpoints. I climbed Black Elk Peak, then called Harney Peak (presumably after some white colonizer asshat) with Teewinot and an ex-girlfriend as the first stop on a cross-country trip to move her from Montana to New England … Read more
Here’s some of the various and interesting seaplane bases (SPB) from FAA aeronautical charts that I found while working to get my ASES rating this year. I’m a total map nerd and can spend hours looking at maps. I’d love to develop this type of page into training materials that CFIs could use for seaplane … Read more
Carl Sagan shows how Eratosthenes 2200 years ago was able to deduce the circumference of the earth based on two obelisks 800 km apart.
Here’s a photo essay of our flight to the San Juans for lunch on a beautiful winter day!
Here’s some memories from all of the live performances I’ve seen on stage in 2025. I have a goal to see more live art this year than ever before. This includes ballet, concerts, dance, lectures, musicals, plays, basically anything that is performed on a stage. Newest photos are on top, and I put a text … Read more
We’ve made Montana Griz football a constant companion. There’s nothing like being in Washington Grizzly Stadium in Missoula for a consummate beat-down of the visiting team. Welcome to Missoula, beeatch!! 😝Since moving to Seattle, our goal has been to attend at least one game per year! Go Griz!
After the Lord Huron concert we stayed in the historic Davenport Hotel and then headed home, visiting five more Washington state airports! Spokane International Airport (Geiger Field) (GEG) I’ve flown out of GEG many times over the last 25 years – it used to be to get anywhere from Missoula you had to drive to … Read more
As we were headed to Spokane for a Lord Huron concert, we took the opportunity to visit some North Central and Eastern Washington airports. Here’s what we found! Othello Municipal Airport (S70) As is expected with most “east side” rural Washington airports, there’s not a lot here except agricultural operations. Othello Municipal has no pilot … Read more
Although my favorite band Lord Huron was playing in Seattle, we had so much fun seeing them in 2023 at the Spokane Pavilion we made the cross-state trip to see them again!! In addition, the Pavilion only seats ~4500 people, a far more intimate gathering than the 20k seat Climate Pledge Arena! This was hands-down … Read more
For this year’s Lord Huron concert in Spokane, we decided to stay in the historic Davenport hotel.
Odessa is a small town of 896 in central Washington that may be best known for its Deutschesfest thanks to the Volga Germans that moved here a century ago and named it after Odessa, Ukraine. According to the Odessa Wikipedia page, one of the highlights is Polka music is provided by the Oom Pas and … Read more
We almost drove past this town of 429 people on State Route 28, but at the last minute, I thought “let’s see what’s here,” and I’m glad we did! There’s not much going on in Harrington but for history buffs, there’s something to it. Driving down Harrington’s “main street” also known as North 3rd Street, … Read more
Cascade PBS (nee KCTS, Crosscut, Cascade Public Media) has a fantastic short-form show about fascinating history, mystery, and peculiarities of the Pacific Northwest. As a Cascade PBS sustaining member, I was invited to a sneak leak (that’s a typo but I’m going with it, lol) of the upcoming seasons at their Seattle HQ. See Pat … Read more
Here’s some vintage neon signs we’ve spotted around (mostly) the west!
October 6th after work we dropped off the 4Runner at the Concrete Beach at Magnuson, and then loaded the canoe on the hilariously small Crosstrek to drive the few blocks down to our local Lake City Beach Park for a one-way paddle. This was the first year we paddled anything from Lake City, and the … Read more
I love looking at Google Earth satellite images of far-away and remote places and dream about what it would be like to explore these isolated corners of the earth. Here are some musings about aviating in the Aleutian islands of Alaska. Akutan Akutan is a small fishing village, population ~1500 in the Aleutian islands northeast … Read more
While reading Jay Spenser’s highly recommended “The Airplane: How Ideas Gave Us Wings,” I learned that motorcycle and aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss was the first seaplane pilot and considered the father of Naval Aviation! Of course, having recently earned my Airplane Single Engine Sea (seaplane) rating, I was thrilled to learn this! Curtiss was the … Read more
Got a couple days of “SDP” in last week on Lake Washington! The winds had some waves going so there was no way I was going to try to stand up, not to mention having a 70-pound DEG on the boat with me!