A couple weeks ago, Becca and I had a chance to visit the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This is the companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall.
The building is a basically a large hangar with suspended walkways for viewing the aircraft.
The Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (background) is an experimental aircraft and the predecessor of the F-35 Lightning II. The F-35 is currently in flight testing but the government plans to buy 2,443 aircraft for an estimated $323 billion. In the foreground is the Grumman A-6E Intruder.
I've always had a fascination with space and modern military aircraft, and the Blackbird is my all-time favorite. The SR-71 was a top secret spy plane that could fly at sustained speeds of over Mach 3 (2,300+ mph) at an altitude of over 80,000 feet. From this altitude, it could survey 100,000 square miles per hour of the Earth's surface and was accurate enough to read a car's license plate.
The high speed caused intense friction and heated parts of the aircraft to over 900 degrees. Brand new materials had to be invented to prevent the aircraft from burning up and pilots had to wear full pressure suits that were later adapted for use on the space shuttle. The most amazing part of all this is that the aircraft began development in 1959 before modern computers existed. It entered service in 1964 and was retired in 1998.
Here's a clip from a documentary highlighting some other amazing facts about the Blackbird:
We recently took a weekend trip to Jim Thorpe, PA. It's an interesting old coal town that changed it's name to "Jim Thorpe" after the well-known athlete and Olympic medalist passed away in the 50's. They bought his remains from his widow, put up a monument, and treat him like a home-town hero, despite the fact that he's from Oklahoma. The goal was to attract more tourism, and it probably worked. It's a really neat historic town with a lot of shops, galleries, restaurants, and outdoor activities. Besides, I don't think their previous name of "Mauch Chunk" was doing anything for the tourist trade.
It an interesting side-note, I read that one of Jim Thorpe's sons recently sued the town to have his remains moved back to Oklahoma. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
On the way into town, I just had to get my photo taken in front of a huge piece of mining equipment. This one's for you, Liam!
Here are a few shots from around town.
The second day there, we decided to take a hike. Based on the sign, it sounded like a good trail for anyone who's 6 months pregnant.
We only made it about 10 minutes up the trail before deciding it probably wasn't a good idea to proceed. Supposedly there are really nice waterfalls higher up in the gorge, but it probably doesn't get any better than this!
Besides, I remember hearing some advice back in high school to not go chasing waterfalls, so we headed back down to the rivers and lakes that we were used to.
Here's a view from the other end of the tunnel above.
They have some great rail-trails, I'd like to come back with a bike sometime!
Here's a view of Mauch Chunk Lake.
We followed a road to the top of a nearby mountain and it opened up to a beautiful view of Jim Thorpe. The portion toward the bottom-center of the photo is the historic area where we stayed. If you end up visiting, we would also recommend dinner at Moya!
I don't think we mentioned this when we posted the last ultrasound picture, but we decided not to find out the gender of our baby. Here's a picture from our latest ultrasound. It's 3D, which can look a little strange, but you can make out the head on the right (looking to the left) and a foot sticking up on the left. The tech could barely get a picture because the baby kept it's hands and/or feet in front of it's face. Such a modest baby, not wanting to show off for the camera....
Here are some ultrasound photos from last week. The first one is a full-body view from the side with the back up and head to the lower-right looking down.
The next one is a side-profile of the head looking up and the last one is a hand.
Last weekend, we went backpacking in the Adirondack Mountains with our friends Adam and Elspeth. Becca and I go camping once or twice a year, but we've never done an actual backpacking trip where we had to carry everything with us. We decided on a 3 day hike in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area.
On Friday, we made the 7.5 hour drive to D.A.R. State Park just across the border in Vermont. We arrived in the evening and camped out Friday night. We left right after breakfast and headed to the trailhead to start our hike.
Here's a map showing where we hiked and camped each day. Our best estimate is that the hike was about 17 miles. Day one was 8 miles, day two was 2.5 miles, and day three was 6.5 miles.
On day 1, we arrived around noon and started the hike near Crane Pond. We decided to make the hike over Pharaoh Mountain while we were feeling fresh.
It was a long climb, my thighs were burning by the time we made it to the top.
These two panoramic photo are both looking west from the summit. You can vew a large version of the top photo (775Kb, 3000 x 600 pixels) or the bottom photo (736Kb, 3000 x 675 pixels).
This photo is looking east with Pharaoh Lake behind us. You can actually see the site where we camp the third night (spoiler alert) in a lean-to!
Becca and I both thought the hike down was harder than the hike up. Not so much in a tiring way, but more so in a painful knees-and-ankles-hurt-really-bad way. By the time we got down, we were all tired and ready to call it a day but we had to find a place to camp. We found a nice lean-to, but it was already taken so we found a semi-flat area and pitched our tents. We were too tired to make a fire, but we enjoyed some Mountain House meals and went to bed.
The next morning, Elspeth cooked up some delicious bacon and pancakes for breakfast!
We were all still feeling worn out from the previous day and decided to only hike a few miles until we found a nice camp site for the second night.
Here's the view from the south-west tip of Pharaoh Lake.
About half way through day 2, the trail opened up to the lake and we had a great view of Pharaoh Mountain that we had climbed the day before. It was absolutely beautiful! I made a desktop wallpaper version (950Kb, 1920 x 1200 pixels).
At one point we came accross a nice camp site, but passed it up in hopes gaining a little more ground. We soon came up on a sweet lean-to over looking the lake. There was a couple packing up their things and they said we were welcome to it. Looking at the map later, we realized that the trail didn't even go past this lean-to, but Adam picked the perfect time to miss a turn and we hit the jackpot!
It was only about 11am, so we had most of the day to relax. The bugs were pretty bad in parts of the woods, but a nice cool wind was coming off the lake which made for perfect weather and no mosquitoes. We made coffee, took a nap and played cards. Adam and Elspeth taught us to play Euchre which was a lot of fun! It was a perfect day.
Someone left a canoe on this outcropping of rocks.
Below are Becca and Elspeth filtering drinking water from the lake and all of us enjoying dinner around the fire.
Starting the 3rd day of our hike, everyone still looks pretty happy.
A foot bridge was out, so we had to do some rock hopping.
This was an interesting formation of rocks in the lake.
Adam nimbly jumping across a stream and me standing in the woods.
We didn't see a lot of wildlife on the trip, but we did see a beaver jump in the water and swim away. We also saw a number of beaver lodges on our way back.
Taking a break with about 1 or 2 miles to go.
Here's the "after" photo with the car just around the next bend. We still look pretty chipper, but by the last mile, my feet were really hurting.
It was a great trip! We had a lot of fun getting away and it was nice to not have a phone or computer for a few days. Thanks Adam and Elspeth for showing us the backpacking ropes!
We have an exciting announcement to make; there's a mini Brock or Becca on the way!! The ETA is November 6 and we're super excited. Besides being a little tired at the beginning, Bec has been feeling completely normal.
We have really enjoyed our time together as a married couple without kids, but we're now looking forward to big changes and the next phase of our life together. We're both the youngest in our families, so I'm sure we'll have lots of questions for friends and family, but hey, how hard can this kid thing be? ;)
A few months ago, my friend Chuck asked if I'd be willing to take some photos for an album he was recording. Dave Warfel and I met him at an old warehouse and took some shots that worked out well for the album. We also put together a website and Dave designed the album artwork and CD. It was a very fun project, but the best part is the music. Chuck did an amazing job on the this album and I've really been enjoying it! You can listen to samples on his website and I would highly recommend picking up a copy (iTunes, Amazon).
