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.