A tense episode of...

The Fugitive  That's me.

First on a lousy, cloudy day, I chased elusive patches of sunlight at Colorado Springs' Garden of the Gods. This was about the only sunlight I saw all morning, but I learned a lot about where all the formations were. Will definitely come back when I can get good lighting.

Here are some formations from the Central Garden:

 

The clouds moved in soon after I took those, so I drove further South for the Royal Gorge Bridge. While the sunlight was weak, the winds were very light.

 

I was eager to get some drone footage, I set it up, and--another miracle! My guardian angels delivered again! Suddenly I had a five-minute patch of pretty good light. Vroom-vroom! Up she went!

 

 

Before landing, I flew closer for a final view of the bridge and its deep gorge from the center of the crevasse. What a view!

 

 

And now for the Fugitive moment. I was anxious that the drone might be seen and the park wouldn't like the intrusion--even though everything I have read told me that flying at the gorge is legal. I had the car parked under trees out of sight, just in case.

 

Suddenly, five minutes after I hurriedly packed the drone into my car, I heard a helicopter. It was  flying close to the cliff atop which I was parked. It circled fairly close, but at the cliff edge rather than up over the trees where the car and I were.

 

I don't believe in coincidences, so the minute it turned away toward the visitor center I got out of there--relieved that no cars with flashing lights appeared in the rear-view mirror as I took off down the exit road.

 

Tune in for more pulse-pounding excitement tomorrow!

 

Oh, Thunder and lightning are going on outside...

 

 

 

Desperately searching for Fall colors...

Well, yes, they're around--up at 10,000 feet! This was near Breckenridge ski area. The Dillon Reservoir surface is at 9,000 feet. The surrounding hills tower up another thousand feet or more.

I'm hoping that over the next few days the color moves down to drone-flyable altitudes.

 

When I get some nice sunshine on all these hills, I'll have the GoPro and my Canon for HDR images   ready.

 

 

By the way, since my new motel here in Canon City has a fast wi-fi, I'll add some of my nice Grand Junction videos flying above the Colorado. This is a small lake next to the Colorado near the town of Fruita.

 

 

This is near that lake near Fruita, where a road enters the West end of the Colorado National Monument, flying up to view the Colorado River looking West, then East:

 

 

And a leisurely flight above the peaceful Rifle Reservoir:

 

 

It's raining at the moment. Let's hope that means Sun tomorrow!

 

 Meanwhile, I'm staying at a very comfortable motel at which I seem to be the only customer.

 

Hope this isn't the Bates Motel...

 

The motel is run by a very pleasant Japanese man--I realized after a while that his clientele probably all arrive in big buses filled with Japanese tour groups. Group travel is their preferred mode of overseas travel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting in gear for the Supermoon eclipse...

The Supermoon eclipse was as much of a wonder as I had hoped it would be. I stood under the stars atop the Colorado National Monument, along with a retired State Trooper named Larry. We wouldn't let each other quit until we had gone through totality.

I had gone through a very long day, but with his help I persisted until 10:00 P.M. before I fled to get some needed sleep after we got images of the beginning of the Moon's emergence from totality.

I have another low bandwidth problem in this motel,  so I'm praying that this sequence of much-downsized images makes it through the upload and hints at the marvel millions witnessed. I have all these as originals, plus many more of the full-sized shots, so it was a successful shoot.
:

 

 

 

 

 

Then today, what was left of me hit the road to Rifle and flew over the Rifle Reservoir. I'll take the plunge and see if the bandwidth can deliver the video version of that flight. Otherwise, it's a still photo to hold the fort 'til I get home.

 

Later bulletin: After uploading all night, a short video still wasn't uploaded. This is more pathetic service than in Twin Falls!

 

Here's a still from the Rifle reservoir video:

 

   

 

Then from Rifle in the East I drove to Fruita in the West of Grand Junction to fly the Inspire over the Colorado River and a number of side lakes and agricultural water storage ponds near it. The first clip is looking toward the East, the second West.

 

 

 

The remarkable thing this year is how late the Fall foliage is. I've seen some nice patches of color far up on the higher mountains, but none in the areas in the valleys where I was flying.

 

 Stay tuned for the videos until after I get home. Sigh.

 

Out of here soon for new adventures!

 

 

 

Guardian angels draw combat pay...

It was a dark and stormy day as we drove through Yellowstone--but there were moments of sheer magic. Despite rain and even snow throughout the day, how can one complain about bison against a backdrop of thermal plumes?

 

There was but one half-hour period of sunshine, and by a miracle it occurred as we entered the site of Upper Mesa Falls. This was one of my prime drone targets for the entire trip.

 

 

All in all, even bad-weather days can result in thrilling videos!

 

And today the forecast is for sunshine!!!!!

Conditions deteriorate for drone videos...

A cloudy, hazy day with poor illumination compared to the past two days.

But--the BASE jumpers were on the bridge, and so was I.

It turns out that the man named Sean is Sean Chuma, instructor and principal of the school Tandembase here in Twin Falls . That's Sean in the promo pictures http://tandembase.com/  Any man that has done  2,000 parachute jumps and 3,000 BASE jumps is fine with me. Since the wind and clouds have grounded me, I'll try to slooooooowly upload some BASE jump videos. Good luck with that.

When I get home, these will go up on my web site in HD, meanwhile, I'll try to get some up in my 'Most Recent' gallery at http://divexprt.phanfare.com/2015/. In the meantime, sorry for the quality problem in the rendering.

Sean is here at the Perrine Bridge with students, running a four-day class which ends tomorrow. He and his charges work hard at this. Alertness and conditioning are vital. Remember I mentioned that tough climb back up from the river up to the parking area? I'm told Sean does it in six minutes. 'Nuff said.

Here's the man, showing how it's done:

 

Here, Sean does an acrobatic jump:

 

 

If the weather eases, I'll be back out tomorrow, looking for that really artistic jump...

 

I have one more day in Twin Falls, then it is off to Driggs and the Grand Tetons for a few days.

Another great drone-flying day...

Like yesterday, the Sun was bright and the wind calm.

So, I raced around trying to get the highlights. As throughout this adventure, the Internet access in my four--no, three--no, two-star motel is dreadfully slow, so I'm showing still photos clipped from my videos. The videos will be displayed later when I have fast broadband somewhere (probably at home. Sigh.).

First a quick stop at Niagara Springs along the Snake River:

 

This is a small fishing lake in the park, with the Snake River to the left:

 

 

Later, when the Sun was in the West, I went out to Balanced Rock in Castleford. It is a wonder, a 48-foot high, immensely heavy formation precariously mounted on a tiny four-foot base. Visitors climb up these paths, and some scramble up to the base:

 

 

The drone enables me to skip the climb, and even better, to hover face to face with the formation:

 

 

Pretty amazing for this to be standing after centuries or millennia of weather...

 

 

The big adventure of the day, though, was beginning to learn how to video the BASE Jumpers at the Perrine Bridge. It was a festival day at the bridge, and a crowd was gathered around the southern end of the bridge:

 

Again, the videos are wonderful, but I'll only use a couple (and that will take a couple of hours). High above the bridge, the Inspire drone observes the visitors waiting for jumpers to come out for their jumps:

 

 

and a ten-second video:

 

 

I'm standing over there among the crowd to the left of the bridge, and you can see the festival to the right. That's where the jumpers suit up. then they walk up a staircase and out onto the bridge--and climb over the railing:

 

 

After their jumps, they have to lug their gear up a steep slope from down next to the river. They are all in astonishingly good condition!  On this page, there is a jumper trudging back up  http://www.divexprt.com/HDRphotography/Idaho.html

 

OK, I'm going to have breakfast, shower, shave, take a walk, go shopping--and maybe by then this !#!$!%!^! paralyzingly slow Internet access will finish a short video of a jumper.

 

 

The viewers wait quite a while for each group of jumpers to get up here. I can only hover for 12 minutes or so at a time, so I have to see them coming--or get lucky.

 

 

An excellent jumper named Sean did an outside loop away from the landing zone. I thought for a moment that he might put it in the drink, but he put it down right on the shoreline. Well-executed jump!

 

I only have time for part of it here, but I'll put the whole jump in my galleries when I get decent broadband (again, probably after I get home).

 

 

Looks cloudy today--I may have gotten my perfect weather, but I did hear something on the radio about rain on Sunday.  Oh, wait. Aaaargh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow! It was just like winning the Indianapolis--uh, 495...

Oh, you thought it was the Indianapolis 500? Not this one. You'll find out when we get to the punch line...

I still have the no-broadband problem here, so all of these still pictures are all clipped from nice videos which I'll put up when I get some broadband. Hey, this is still a lot better than the early days of dial-up...

This was a perfect weather day for flying, so I raced toward Pocatello, and stopped at the Lake Walcott Park, the Minidoka Dam and the rapids (which they call 'falls') below the dam.

 It is a small park, and a pleasant place to try out the repaired drone. I put it up for a lazy flight in the morning glare:

 

In the map above, you can make out the Minidoka Dam. Below it are those Minidoka Falls, where the birds run riot. Hundreds of them. Must be fine dining.

 

 

Happy as I could be, I drove back toward Twin Falls, stopping where the Hanson Bridge crosses the Snake River Gorge:

 

 

 

These two stills are from the beginning and end of a video sequence, which captures the place nicely from above.

 

 

 I continued on in to Twin Falls to fly the Shoshone Falls. First I stopped just upstream from the big falls, to fly up over the Snake River. In this image, the main dam is just where the beautiful water ends:

 

 

The power company has performed a creditable service in developing park-like access to the river:  

 

They also developed a park around nearby Dierkes Lake:

 

 

Dierkes is small but superb for family outings with children. The drone loved it!

 

 

 

I was on a roll! What a great day!

 

Oh, wait.  http://shoshonefalls.tfid.org/live.htm

 

That's right. They turned off the !#!$!%!^! Shoshone Falls! A couple of local people told me that, yes, they had heard the falls were turned off until Spring. The drought, you know.

 

Confucius say: Some days are like that...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Put in a Dierkes Lake Still and the Bosch view of the non-falls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lovely waterfall--and a required pit stop...

The day began calm, so I went to Perrine Coulee Falls around the corner from the Perrine Bridge (who was that Perrine guy, anyway? http://www.divexprt.com/HDRphotography/Idaho%20Trip%202014/BaseJumpersOffBridge/BaseJumpersOffBridge.html  He's the one upper left in the bowler hat).

In any event, the falls is in a sheltered alcove, so I launched and took in from the road level up to where eagles fly. Gorgeous view up there!

 

Imagine the power to erode stone that water has!

 

 

There are very nice homes on the rim of the butte above. They and the drone have quite a view--Centennial Park, the Snake River, and around to the right in the second picture of these next two, the Perrine Bridge.

 

 

I stood on that big hill in the center to shoot the images of the kayakers and the bridge yesterday. You can hardly make out the bridge in this morning light, but its image is reflected on the water surface at the far right.

 

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll download a short clip of the falls, and see if it takes until bedtime...

 

 

Now the bad news. Had a hard landing with the Inspire yesterday and broke a strut on the airframe. Don't ask. It doesn't matter what happened or why, it is always the pilot's fault. After the landing, I tried a takeoff, and could see the right rear engine wobbling. That is what we highly-trained professionals call a 'clue.'

 

Requires a brief excursion to the repair facility in Vegas, where I hope they will execute a NASCAR pit stop in world record time. Then I will whip back up here and resume the adventure.

 

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

― Winston S. Churchill

 

“We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm.”

― Winston S. Churchill

 

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

 

     “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

 

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

 

Thanks, Winston. I needed that...

Looking for Summer weather in Fall...

Last time I was here, the weather in May two years ago was gorgeous. Not so in September. I was talking with store clerks yesterday, and they said two profound things: "September. Time to get ready for Winter.

Even worse, when I then asked, "Doesn't the wind ever stop around here?" they answered, "You're in Idaho, Blows all the time. If you wait five minutes, it will blow even harder."

Still, I've managed some good videos, but the Internet access is so slow all I can do is put a few stills here.

 

That view is of some kayakers on the Snake river below the Perrine Bridge. That's the bridge from which the BASE jumpers parachute. The wind was too strong for the drones, but I went to see the hardy few braving the wind and cool temperatures. Two were wet, and from what I overheard, one didn't quite make it to the landing area, landed in the water by the river bank and was pulled out by the other  Here's some from my last visit:  http://www.divexprt.com/HDRphotography/Idaho%20Trip%202014/BaseJumpersOffBridge/BaseJumpersOffBridge.html

 

It's easier in Summer...

 

Then I went to the Yingst Road overlook, where there is a waterfall.

 

 

A local told me that most of the falls around Twin Falls are from agriculture, the overflow from farms' irrigation canals. For my purposes, this little falls was perfect--it was in an alcove protected from the wind!

 

The water flows down to the Snake River.

 

 

Where it is just another tributary of the mighty Snake.

 

 

I sent a drone up to view the higher part of the falls:

 

 

And I have a very nice video flying up there and slowly coming down the falls:

 

 

For a final stop, I went to the Twin Falls Hydroelectric plant, where a very nice lake and park are above this outlet:

 

 

Where the birds zip around just above the cataract:

 

 

At every stop, I had to put on a jacket each time I got out of the car and got blown about a lot. Still, the scenery here is so dramatic that you take it as you can.

 

Look on the bright side! With luck, later in my trip I'll get the bright colors of Fall foliage to photograph.