Birds Eye View

Today we view things from a different perspective. A good friend is part owner in a small plane, so I was able to "hitch" a ride from him and fly up to Vermont to get some pictures from a different angle. Sunday was such a perfect day for flying, hardly a cloud in the sky. My first encounter was with a Hot Air Balloon, as I left the house and headed toward the airport. As you can see the sky was clear and deep blue.

We met at the hangar, and Ed went through his checklist, while I tried to stay out of the way.

We took off ~ 9:00, and set a course north, flying pretty close to parallel to I-91. We quickly were into Massachusetts, flying past Westover Airfield, where the "big" planes were.

Continuing north, we passed into Vermont and New Hampshire. As we went further north the colors grew more extreme. The hills seemed to pop with color everywhere, with bright oranges, yellow, and reds sharply contrasting with the dark and light greens.

Flying definitely gives you a different outlook on things. As you look straight ahead, it seems like time is suspended, and you are hardly moving. When you look down to the sides, you see things go by, but it still seems like a reduced speed. At one point we were doing ~170 knots, which translates to ~190-200 mph, but yet it seemed like much less than that. We flew over the Connecticut River many times in the way up, as it twists all along the border of VT and NH. In a different aspect, you could see the fog that we often drive in on those early morning, hugging the river, covering it like a blanket.



Although there was a slight head wind, we made it up to our property in about 1 hour and 30 minutes. This was about 2 hours quicker than it would take to drive. Had the winds been lighter it would have been much less (as witnessed by the 1 hour return trip) As we got closer we were able to start picking out familiar landmarks, most of which stood out, some however , because of the different angle, it sometimes was a bit tough till the last minute. The following picture is the farm and field from above the scenic outlook in last weeks blog, with the St.Johnsbury dam in the top of the picture.



From here, we knew we had to head slightly northwest to the property. Shortly after banking left, we were able to start spotting familiar landmarks again, including the house with a tee pee in the yard. I missed a shot of that but will get one from the ground next time I go up. Seconds after we passed the tee pee, we were over the property. We several good shots of the foundation and fields nearby.



From the south.


From the east



From a distance



In this picture, if you see the big red barn at the tip of the wing, and then the large clump of trees slightly above that, we are to the left of that on the other side of the road. After a quick stop at the Lyndonville airport....


We took back off for home. The colors up this far north were pretty spectacular too.



We flew over the Vermont corn maze and then headed south towards home.



What an awesome trip! I even flew the plane a little bit. You definitely gain respect for pilots after that, with all the things you need to keep aware of, winds, speed, direction, attitude and so much more. I found I lean to the left a bit for some reason. Once on course, we would start drifting a little bit left every time :). Still it was a great experience, and I thank Ed very much for going up and taking me on a weekend day, when he probably could have been doing something else more important.