Labor Day Breakfast

Over Labor Day weekend, I took a quick trip with Gordon Nielson to Smiley Creek for breakfast. Not a bad thing to do on a beautiful Saturday morning. We left Pocatello around 7:00am and headed towards Twin Falls for a little sight seeing. We then turned north and flew over Hailey and Ketchum and then dropped over Galena Pass into the Sawtooth Valley where the Smiley Creek Airport is located. As you walk over to the local cafe, you cross a little footbridge which spans (no bigger than a ditch) the headwaters of the Salmon River.

Final approach at Smiley Creek runway 14. This is my first flight into an airport with a grass strip. Note the brush trail to the right of the landing strip which contains the Salmon River.

Looking North up the Sawtooth Valley. What a neat setting.

Breakfast is just across the Salmon River which is in the brush right behind me.

Gordon cleans the windshield on his plane. What a nice ride!



Redfish Lake in Sawthooth Valley. Stanley is just to the north.



The Sawthooth Range with 22 peaks over 10,000 ft



Heading east from the Sawtooths, we intecept Lost River Range which includes the 12,668 ft Mt Borah, the highest point in Idaho. This shot is from the north side of the peak.



SW side of Mt Borah



13,500 ft! This is the highest I have flown in a private plane!



If you look close, you can see the climbers on Mt Borah.



Autopilot Stinks!



We passed just to the north of Craters of the Moon National Monument on our way home to Pocatello.



Back to Pocatello with a feather landing on runway 21. Nice job Gordon!

Park City Live 3

The 3rd Annual Fantasy Football Draft took place in Park City the last weekend in August. It is always good to see everyone and spend a few days having a good time together. We had our regular flag football game and played a little wii and a lot of Scum.

The Fantasy Draft is just an excuse to get together. We also went to he Olympic Park and watched an areal show. We had intended to ride the bobsled, but some stupid "clothing" company had rented the whole facility for the day. Oh well we will do it next year!!

Post game pictures with no injuries this year!!

Group Photo at the Olympic Park. What Nerds, we had "official lanyards"

International Space Station and STS-128

One of my favorite past times is watching the International Space Station fly overhead. Most evenings you can spot the space station just after sunset. With a little help from the internet, you can get get information on where to look and when. One of the best sites to get this information is called "Heavens Above". You can follow the link below to check it out.

Heavens-Above

On September 9th our family viewed the ISS flyover with Space Shuttle. The shuttle (STS-128) had just departed the ISS in preparation for its return to Earth on the 11th. The shuttle flew by first and was about minute ahead of the ISS. Traveling at 4.5 miles per second, that translates to roughly 270 miles.

The Space Shuttle (STS-128) passes through Ursa Major (Big Dipper)



The ISS is obviously brighter than the Shuttle as it fly's overhead. This is about a 25 second exposure.

The ISS passes through Cassiopeia and Andromeda. One cool thing about this picture is you can actually see M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) in this photo if you look real close!

Ares I Ground Test

On Thursday September 10th, ATK performed a ground test of the Ares I booster at their facility near Promontory Utah. The test was originally scheduled for August 27th and was scrubbed with 20 seconds to go in the countdown. I was very disappointed to say the least because I went out of my way to get there.

I was now even more committed to make it to this event and hoped I would not make the long trip again to be denied!

I was not disappointed. The light from the plume was about as intense as looking at the sun.

During the test an extreme amount of energy was released by this bad boy..... The booster was about 1.3 miles away from the public observing area. The booster is producing about 3.6 Million pounds of thrust for over two minutes.

You can read more about the booster from the ATK press release found at this link:

http://atk.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=118&item=956

My test firing video: