Miata Photos

Miss Me? I Didn’t Miss You…

We went out west on vacation. I had good intentions of posting a photo a day and maybe even telling some quick story of something that happened as well, but it seemed like once we off a plane in Seattle we didn’t have time to relax until we got back on a plane to come home again.

The sun comes up an hour earlier out there and sets over an hour later, so that, along with the mild temperatures, meant we used up every bit of day doing stuff, only stopping to eat and sleep. On our 7 day trip we used four for visiting 2 different wings of Donna’s family in two different countries, 3 for jamming in some touristy stuff of our own and 2 days for travel (I know that’s more than 7, but I rounded up.) For the first time in any of our numerous visits to the Pacific northwest we actually had a couple days (once again rounding up) of weather that is most associated with that reason, a light rain/mist.

Over the next week I’ll try and pretend that each day is a day from the vacation and do that thing I thought I’d do while I was on vacation.

The above is a Miata of multi-colors spotted while walking off the ferry on Whidbey Island.

Photo Fun

Three pictures are worth 3,000 words…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1146

Super Moon Other Way

We went out driving in the Miata looking for tonight’s Super Moon. Once we got heading east we could see we were in trouble because we could see the tops of thunder clouds on the horizon. It was still in the upper 80’s, but the sun was down and it seemed pleasant enough, so we kept on driving. Followed one road til it T’d at a dirt road, flipped a mental coin and went left. A little less than a mile we came to a paved road with a recognizable name, so we took it and headed back into town for some ice cream.

Part way back, as we drove along a smooth, two-lane back road there was the moon off to the left. Found a place to stop and take some photos, but by that time it was too high in the sky to look anything different that a plain ol’ full moon. Fooled around snapping photos, but nothing came out worth anything except maybe this picture of The Emperor with a car passing in the background taken facing away from the Super Moon.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1132

Parade Wave And Expensive Crab Legs

Here is the 640 x 360 size of the dirty mouth’d Emperor and Donna doing her parade wave.

Last Saturday’s dinner was a seafood buffet at the Mountainview Bistro in Fontana Village. The cost was $21.95 per person, but somehow when they rang up our ticket they entered an extra 21, making the cost of our meal $2121.95 each. With tax and a 20% tip the total bill for Donna and I would have been $5436.44! Fortunately this was before they got a hold of my charge card, so all this amounted to nothing more than an interesting story for this blog.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1090

Serious Business

Like we did a couple months ago when we drove the Sonata through the Dragon we opted to buy a couple photographic souvenirs. High resolution photos are great, but like local news anchors opinion of HDTV, they can be a little too great. In the little thumbnail to the left, the looks on Donna’s and my face make it seem like we are not having a good time, our expressions make it appear like driving the Gap is serious business*, like we aren’t having fun. Well, we were, and if you click on the thumbnail to look at the full image, reduced to 640 x 360, the frowns are not so noticeable.

*Which I guess in certain ways it actually is.

In the second photo we bought, at least Donna was smiling (my expression is pretty much similar in both) as it was taken on the return trip and knowing where the photographer was allowed her to get her smile ready and even sneak in a parade wave. Once again the high resolution was a slight determent, because when you view the photo at 100% it allows you to notice that the vampire teeth are dirty and count how many leaves are stuck in the grill…

Bumper Bear

It is about 12 miles from the town of Robbinsville on US129 to where Deals Gap and its 318 turns begin. Up until then it is mostly smooth, mostly flat and mostly straight (well, straight enough that a Miata can run the distance at 55 MPH easy, but in other vehicles your speed may vary.) About 3 miles from the start of the curvy stuff we were barreling along, me & Donna in front and Kurt and Karen not far behind when out pops a small bear cub from the left side of the road.

I take my foot off the gas and tap the brake to slow down. He is probably just going to cross over, but he hears us coming and starts running, not continuing across mind you, but in the same direction of travel as us. I’ve slowed down now to around 30 and both Donna and my head are swiveling looking for the momma bear, because this guy looks huggable sized, maybe 30 – 40 pounds and might not be alone. We don’t see anything but the cub running in the left lane. Just about the time I think he is headed back to the left, he takes a hard right and disappears in front of the car.

I’m going about 20 miles an hour at this point and I’m waiting to feel us run over it, but all we hear is a bump sound and the next thing we see is the small bear sliding down the pavement in the left lane. He skids about 10 feet down the road to a stop in the middle of the left lane. I come to a stop about 10 yards ahead of him. I check my mirror, it looks like Kurt and Karen have stopped pretty much right beside him, and the bear shakes his head a couple times and walks off back to the side of the road from which he came.

Kurt tells us later that as he got to the guardrail and went to duck under, the poor thing bumped his head. He was probably still a little stunned. As were the four of us.

We then drove down the road about a mile and pulled over to look at the nose of the Emperor. Amazingly enough the only sign anything had happened was that that side of the bumper was wet from where I probably knocked the water out of his fur (it had been lightly raining in the area today.)

Coincidentally, about maybe five or ten minutes before this happened, Donna had remarked to me that she was going to be keeping an eye out for bears and deer and such because we are pretty much in the middle of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest nowhere near any civilization…

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
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New Header Image

Changed the header image to one of the photos taken last weekend at the J Strom Thurmond Dam. I have a somewhat similar shot of the Emperor, but not similar enough to do a rotating banner.

I guess if we drove both cars up there, put the camera on a tripod, marked the spot and systematically took two photos, drove both cars home, edited the photos – nah, not worth it. I guess I will have to put a Miata photo up here sometime again though, what with the domain name I have.

Wait a minute, maybe mr-sonata.net is available…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1079