No freeways on this leg, just wonderfully twisty roads through the Great Smokey Mountains - including the Tail of The Dragon, a famous/notorious stretch of Hwy 129 with 318 curves in 11 miles.  It's a challenge even on dry roads, and we were in steady rain and a rental car!  And were still held up by a very slow Corvette... :-)  No photos of the Tail itself as I was having too much fun driving, but there are some equally enjoyable twisty roads throughout the mountains.    The Tail starts just as Hwy 129 runs past Calderwood Dam and Lake, and ends at Deal's Gap.  Hwy 28 starts there and runs pa ..read more

A lot of freeway driving from Memphis to Nashville. then on to Chattanooga and finally Knoxville, but the countryside became more beautiful with every mile.  An overnight in Nashville to see an old friend allowed a visit to see The Grand Ole Opry, the home of country music.  The relatively modern building between the Opryland Hotel and a huge modern shopping mall wasn't what we'd expected, despite being (no doubt) much more functional than its Grand Ole predecessor. On to Chattanooga ..read more

    After our sobering and thought-provoking visit to Montgomery, we headed to Memphis to explore some of that city's famous musical roots.  Much as we acknowledge Elvis Presley's impact on rock and roll, a visit to Graceland was off the table; they've built tall buildings all around the mansion so you can't see it from the road, and $65/person is just too much admission.  Instead, after an outstanding barbecue lunch at William's roadside shack across the river in West Memphis, we stopped in at Stax Studios.  Despite being a reconstruction of the original building, on the same site and with th ..read more

   Despite its quiet and peaceful air today, Montgomery has a bloody history as the center of the slave trade in the south, the terminus for trains bringing thousands in from the north (international slave trading had been abolished in 1804) and the site of many slave markets.    It's impossible to really get a grip on your emotions when you're faced with something as horrific, meaningful and powerful as the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, otherwise known as the National Lynching Memorial.  Located on a small hill in downtown Montgomery - visible from both the courthouse and the Capit ..read more

Our road trio through the South continued into Alabama, first with a stop at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham to check out their astonishing display of 1,600 motorcycles, and then on to Montgomery to catch up on our civil rights history.  Neither of us had been here before, and while our main interest was to see the Peace and Justice Memorial (which will be the subject of my next post) we were quite taken with Montgomery as a city.  As with many state capitals, and despite its turbulent and horrific past, it seemed a relatively small, quiet place with some interesting archit ..read more

Good news - my 2019 calendar just came back from the printer and is available for purchase!  This year's theme is "Bridges"; the calendar contains 12 images of bridges in the US and Europe that highlight their fascinating variety, from multi-mile feats of engineering to delicate wooden structures in a Japanese garden.  Check it out and place your orders now! I also took the opportunity to refresh the site galleries.  Since I was clearly having trouble maintaining a "Gallery of the Month", I scrapped that concept and replaced it with a gallery of "Recent Additions".  This first version showcas ..read more

   Back in the air again!  This was the opening leg of a two-week road trip through several southern states we hadn't visited yet on our way to seeing all 50.  Our original plan was to fly to Charlotte and drive to Charleston, but Hurricane Florence coming directly at us on that path suggested a re-route to Atlanta!  American was very helpful in re-booking us via DFW.    Airport taxiway and runway markings continue to interest and amuse me; this one at SeaTac seemed pretty self-evident!    The flight to Dallas was straightforward, the landscape as always fascinating in its complexity and tex ..read more

Welcome to the re-launch of my photo Web site!  After many years of concentrating on the many intriguing patterns and textures of this beautiful world as seen from a window seat at 30,000 ft, I've had a lot of interest from many people about the things I see at ground level as well.  Accordingly, I've now added a new set of Ground Level photo galleries to complement the Flight Level ones.  Please explore them and let me know what you think! I've also taken the opportunity to change the focus of my annual calendar to Ground Level to shake things up a bit.  The new one for 2018 has just been re ..read more

Back in the air again for a week-long trip to Toronto, visiting many old friends in the hospitality technology business during the annual HITEC Conference; it felt good to be back in my favorite window-seat environment!  With three parallel runways take-offs at SeaTac often require "after you" pauses when one plane needs to get to its assigned runway; here a Horizon Q400 is ready to roll as soon as our 737 passes through. ​​It's no secret that I'm fascinated by patterns, man-made as well as natural.  Someone did an outstanding job lining up these school buses south of Seattle! ​Somet ..read more

Hawaii has always been one of our favorite vacation spots, and Maui our preferred island; it's a place that always makes us smile as soon as we land there.  This time we finally took the helicopter trip we'd long promised ourselves, and picked the tour of West Maui and the north coast of Molokai.  It was, of course, spectacular!  (As usual, more photos can be found in the Gallery of the Month; click on any image to enlarge it.) ​Taking off from the heliport at Kahului Airport, we crossed Kahului Bay on our way to West Maui.  As usual, there was a stiff breeze blowing from the northeast, wh ..read more