CAP Orientation Flight!

Hey all!  So I took my first orientation flight for Civil Air Patrol on Saturday and had a blast!  We flew from Centennial Airport to Limon and back.

I got to fly at the controls between Centennial and Limon!  It was really exciting.  I also took some pictures before the flight and in the air on the way back from Limon:

This is the plane we flew in!  I believe that  it's a Cessna 172.

 

 

 

 

 

This is me inspecting the elevators and rudder in the pre-flight checklist.  It was pretty exciting to actually be an active part of the checklist - I thought it was pretty fun!!

 

 

This is us checking the propeller.  I'm in the center, our pilot is to the viewer's left of me, and the other cadet I flew with is on the other side (you can only see his cap)

 

 

This is just a picture of the landscape as we headed back from Limon.  I thought the trees looked nice :)

 

 

 

 

So this is pretty much the same type of picture - just some trees around a creek.  I like this one quite a bit, though, because you can see the curvature of the Earth, which just makes you feel like you're above everything else.  It's hard to explain, but you feel like you're above all the troubles in the world when you're up there, and this picture reminded me of that!

 

So this is a nice picture with Pike's Peak in the background, and it just looks really nice.  Castle Rock is off to the right.

 

 

 

 

That's Castle Rock in the distance!!  I thought it only appropriate to take a picture of my hometown as it was seen from the air (and a few miles off...)

 

 

This is our shadow!  This is right before landing at Centennial, and I had been watching the shadow for a while because it was entertaining to watch it keep pace with us ;)

 

 

Cool!  So I definitely signed up for the next available flight as soon as I could, because this one was so much fun.  That should be on 24 November - I'm psyched!  I'll try and take pics on that day,too, and post them here.

Post-Season Tennis Update

Hey all! Just wanted to give a quick tennis update for everyone. Tennis season ended on 27 September:

• I ended the season 2nd on the team.
• I ended the season as JV Team Captain!
• I won 4 out of 12 games, which sounds really bad - however, it's pretty good for our school.

The season went really well, over all. I'm pretty sure I'll make Varsity next year, and I'm conditioning so that I'll make Varsity for Track this upcoming Spring. I'll keep you posted!

Backpacking

So, after forgetting about this thing for a while, I suddenly remembered and thought about new posts!

Well, I just got back from Backpacking up at Isolation Lake with Zach and his dad. We took a few pics (more are to come from his dad) that I think look really nice. The first one should be a pic of the slope we had to bushwhack through to get to the lake! The trees aren't really growing sideways - the camera was just tilted so it looks like it ;) If you download and rotate the picture a few degrees, you can get an idea of what we were hiking up - which was not easy!

This second is a picture of the lower Isolation Lake (which I think takes a better picture) which was north of our campsite. It's a lot smaller than the upper lake, but looks nicer. We have to trek through this area to get to our actual campsite, and it isn't nearly as nice as it looks ;) It's actually fairly swampy and muddy.... There aren't very many fish in that lake either - most are in the upper lake, which is behind the camera in this picture. If you look up the mountain, you can see that there's still snow!! Two days after July!!

We also hiked up Mt. Galena, and this is a view from the summit of the mountain. It's really nice, and I think Leadville is down there somewhere. Just below us is a HUGE cliff that's uber-steep and really rocky. Off in the distance are (I think) Paradise Lakes and Lost Lakes, which we want to go to on our next trek. You could sometimes even see fish surfacing in those lakes, but not in this picture. The clouds were really low that day, below eye level! It was really cool looking down on them. That's my finger in the corner, by the way.

This is me with my back to the lower Isolation Lake. As you can see, my face is sunburned! That's from fishing and not wearing a hat... oops.... We ate my fish :) although I don't think it was cooked all the way, but whatever - I feel fine, so... I'm standing on a small rock outcrop that provides a really good picture-taking spot. It's actually just after sunset in this picture, so the lighting's not that good, and the camera's kind of tilted, but that's ok, right? ;) It's still a nice picture (or so my family tells me *cough*)

This is a picture of me fishing! We actually fished quite a lot up there, and managed to catch upwards of 15 or 16 - but we only ate three ;)

Our campsite is on the hill behind me. It's actually a little bit of a hike getting up there!

This is one of the fish I caught as I'm reeling it in - believe it or not, that was my first fish ever caught! Yes, I was a poor shelterred child growing up. Anyway, we ate that one (it was the biggest of all of ours, too !!)

This is a picture of me and Zach just as we were about to set off back to the car. It's about 1030 and our tent used to be right behind us. If truth be told, I'm really not quite ready to set off just yet; I'm still trying to wake up;)

This is of Zach and I resting as we went down that steep slope in the first picture - and we definitely needed a rest! On that mountain behind us there are actually two other backpacking sites that we'd like to visit in the future.

Well, that pretty much sums up my trip - it was a lot of fun!!! I really enjoyed it and can't wait to go again, which should be sometime around 8 August. I don't know where we'll go, but I'll take more pics.