Seafair

Each year during the warm summer weather, Seattle hosts Seafair, a month-long series of events including visits by navy ships, air shows, boat races, and other activities. Over the past few days, I attended first a 'practice' air show and then a hydroplane boat race which included one of the two official performances. Following are some pictures from those events.


A Chinook twin-rotor helicopter flies by with American Flag as National Anthem is sung at the beginning of the event.


A turbine-driven race boat passes by in the pace lap.


Another turbine-powered race boat blasts by during the race. In the background is the huge rooster-tail of another boat having rounded the curve and now traveling in the opposite direction.


A Coast Guard demonstration of aerial insertion technique.


The Patriots, a privately sponsored air demonstration team flying small Eastern European built L-39 trainer jets. The Patriots put on an impressive show but with their smaller aircraft, there were fewer good pictures to share.


As if part of the festivities, between the Patriots practice show and that of the Blue Angels, a wild bald eagle treated us to its own little air show. This image is a montage of eight separate exposures of the same bird taken moments apart.


Affectionately known as "Fat Albert", the Blue Angels service C-130 aircraft flies by beginning their segment of the show.


And welcome the Blue Angels.


Five of the six Blue Angels aircraft descending into a loop maneuver.


Six Blue Angels begin a "Break" maneuver.


A lone Blue Angel fighter passes the smoke trails made a moment earlier by several other team members.


Four of The Blue Angels fly by the seattle skyline. Note the distortion from the jet blast behind the aircraft.


A high-contrast shot shows the Angels at a steep angle opposite the sun. As their smoke trails are brightly illuminated, note the shadow cast in the residual smoke ahead of the formation.


Beautiful Delta Formation.


The source of the smoke trails is not the engines. It's there specifically for these demonstration shows, making it much easier for the spectators to see the action.


Just can't get enough of that Delta formation.


One of several F-15s in a flyover. The roar of these planes is overwhelming.

Homer

Homer, and the strand of land protruding to the southeast known as Homer Spit. We arrived in the evening, so sightseeing had to wait for morning.

Eagles! And lots of them! In what has become a controversial practice, people, and in particular one person, a lady named Jean Keene, regularly feed the eagles. Ms. Keene feeds them at 9AM every morning. We were not there for the feeding, though I'm told that the population of the huge birds increases at least 3-fold just at the right time. We looked but were unable to find any of them wearing a watch.





After watching the eagles for a few hours, we stopped for lunch at a little place called the Latitude 59 Cafe. They have an espresso bar and sandwich counter with soups. We sampled their Chili which was the soup of the day. Quite good. The fellow running the place had just moved to Homer from Hawaii and bought the place and had many an interesting story to tell.

At night, we ordered a pizza from Fat Olive's for take-out. Strolling around while waiting for it to be ready, we happened into a liquor store next door to the restaurant where we learned of the Bear Creek Winery in Homer, that specializes in unusual wines made with local berries, rhubarb, and other mostly locally grown sugar-containing plants. We resolved to check it out the next morning. Our Pizza, by the way, was quite good.

Early the next morning we were awakened by an earthquake of roughly 5.1 magnitude, centered very close by and relatively shallow. It shook fairly violently. By comparison, I was close to Northridge when the quake hit there in 1994, and in Redmond, WA when the 2001 quake hit south of Seattle. The intensity of the shaking in Homer seemed a little stronger than the Seattle area quake as felt from Redmond but nowhere near as violent as the Northridge quake. Still, it was enough to stimulate our adrenal glands and there was no more sleep to be had.

Later that morning we visited the Bear Creek Winery which turns out to also be a very nice little bed and breakfast.They have a lovely tasting room where we were treated to some wonderful and very unusual wines. I'd strongly recommend a stop there for anyone visiting Homer with even a passing interest in wine.

A snow storm moved in over the area over night and effectively prevented any further sightseeing and photo opportunities, so we opted to cut our homer visit short by a day and return to Anchorage where we'd spend an extra day before leaving Alaska.