Recently I traveled to Paris, France to spend time with my siblings, and hang out in the city. My brother Jason has just moved to Paris, and Jill and I thought we’d go see his new place and explore. Overal we had a great trip!
Through The Daily Beast and written up on The Daily Mail: Airbus is planning on making airplanes with windows everywhere, giving flyers panoramic views of the sky. Imaging flying on one of these on a cloudless night, or in the northern latitudes for the northern lights? Just a future dream for now, but I’m sure we’ll get the first steps towards this soon. Space Ship One?
Virgin Galactic's Space Ship One, with panoramic window portals. Just translate this to a commercial airliner..
Ever wanted a panoramic view while on a plane? Airbus unveiled plans for a transparent plane, set to debut sometime around 2050, that would allow passengers to have a panoramic view while in the sky. “Our research shows that the passengers of 2050 will expect a seamless travel experience while also caring for the environment,” said executive vice-president Charles Champion. First-class and business class no longer exists, instead there are areas for relaxation in the front, work in the back as well as a full-stocked bar in the middle. There is also an “interactive zone” which features holographic gaming and virtual shopping. The aircraft’s walls will change according to light conditions as well as in-flight entertainment powered by the heat in people’s bodies.
From The Daily Mail: "Window on the world: Gone are the small aircraft windows in the 'vitalising zone' which provides a panoramic view for passengers."
The past few blog posts have focused on travel – and my attempts to organize and chronicle my travels on this blog. In my research for resources and ways to organize everything, I came across The Traveler’s Century Club List of Countries. The Traveler’s Century Club is a club for travelers who have visited more than 100 countries.
From the website:
Membership in the Travelers’ Century Club (TCC) is limited to those travelers who have visited one hundred or more countries of the world. It was first organized in Los Angeles in 1954 by a group of the world’s most widely traveled people. The idea has attracted the interest of the world travelers everywhere and we now have members throughout the world, as well as the United States.
During a recent discussion and research project with a friend, I came across some interesting new “social travel” sites. As social media, social sharing, and mobile media has taken off in recent months, the travel industry has continued to develop web applications which connect fellow travelers. New sites such as IGoUGo and TravBuddy are bridging the gap between adventure travel and social networks. Here are a few interesting sites I stumbled across. in the coming weeks, I’ll be posting notes as I explore each.
Five years after the trip took place, I’ve finally gotten around to posting up the trip photos, videos, and Sean’s trip report.
Read the original trip post from 2006: Sailing in French Polynesia.
For the next ten days, I’ll be traveling through Peru. During the trip, I’ll be traveling with long time friend Chris Shybut, and we’ll be stopping in Lima, Cusco, Aguas Calientes, and finally Machu Picchu. We’re planning on spending a day mountain biking to salt mines, another few days high altitude mountaineering on the Salkantay trail in the Andes Mountains, and a full day exploring the ruins of Machu Picchu.
Salkantay Trail, Photo by Tim Mowrer
During the trip, I’ll be checking in regularly with my SPOT Satellite Messenger – track our progress on the SPOT tracking page. Posts will also show up on my Facebook page and Twitter stream.
Stay tuned for the after trip report, photos and videos.
For that last 10 days in July, I’ll be taking a road trip around Iceland. My friend Sari and I are flying into Reykjavik, renting a car, and driving a full loop on Iceland’s Route 1. During the trip, we’ll be staying on couches, in hostels, B&B’s, Hotels, on farms, and in tents.
I’m bringing along my iPhone 4, and will be hopefully posting daily updates to my blog, Jeffilla. All Iceland Road Trip posts will be tagged with “Iceland2010“. Stay tuned!
I’ll also be updating my location in the field with my Spot Satellite Messenger – Track me!
This past weekend I was shooting in Lizard Head Wilderness in the San Juan Forrest outside of Telluride, Colorado. This is a 30 second exposure, and if you look closely you can see that the stars are actually little streaks, since the earth moved during the 30 second exposure. View the full photo set from this Telluride 2010.
Recently, I took a trip out to Telluride, Colorado with friends. We enjoyed the Telluride Bluegrass festival, and did a 3 day backcountry trip up to Mt. Wilson and Navajo Lake, in Lizard Head Wilderness. Here are photos from the trip, as well as a short collection of video clips.
Waking up in Kilis this morning, we knew today was going to be a busy one. We started off checking out of the Hotel Paris, throwing our gear in the car, and heading out on a walk around town. Kilis isn’t big, so we covered the town in just an hour or two.
Kirk and I then went to grab a cup of coffee while Steph went to the women’s session at the Hamami. After that we loaded into the car and headed for the Syrian border.
The border was a short 10 minute drive due south. While we didn’t make it into Syria because of visa restrictions, we did talk to some of the border guards in the booth on the edge of the Turkey/Syria buffer zone.
After the Syrian border, we took a back road to the small farming village of Yesemeck. On the way we met a shepard with his flock in the side of the road, who invited us over to his house down the road for tea.
In Yesemeck at sundown, we visited the ancient Hittite rock carving field, and were invited over for dinner and tea by the groundskeeper.
At his house, we were introduced to his whole family – wife, 5 kids, cousin. We had a great traditional meal with the family, then hung out with them for a while.
We got back in the car late, and drove a final few kilometers to Bierceck, where we spent the night.
I recently took a vacation to Alaska. It was a great escape from the city, and an awesome return to the backcountry for my Brother and I, who have both spend time backpacking there. There are a few photos in this blog post, and the rest of them, including captions describing most of the trip, can be found over on flickr. Check out all the Alaska photos.
The view from our kitchen in the backcountry of Denali State Park
During the trip, I took about 700 pictures, along with a few videos. My father also took a couple hundred, as did my brother. I actually uploaded all the photos to flickr, but I think for the sake of time and giving you a good overview of the trip, I’m only making the top 50 or so publicly accessable. If you would like to see more photos from a particular section of the trip, or if you’re planning a trip to the AK and want to know more about any particular section of it, just let me know. I’d be happy to open up more photos and videos.
Throughout the trip, I carried my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS with me, with rechargeable batteries and a 1gb micro SD Card. It was set to record a track log every 30 seconds, and was on for most of the trip. Additionally, for road navigation, I as using Garmin’s US Road Atlas 2008. The whole system worked very well. I made sure to synchronize the clock in my camera, as well as my fathers and brothers cameras to the clock in the gps, so that all time stamps line up.
We took a flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi around the mountains in Denali National Park. The maximum altitude for the plane was 10,000 feet, but Denali tops out around 20,000 feet. The whole flight we were flying very very close to the steep walls of the mountains.
When I got home, I successfully merged the GPS track log with the EXIF data on the photos, and Geotagged each photos. If you go to the flickr photo set, you’ll see a map link on each photo, which will show you on a map approx where the photo was taken. The gps is typically accurate to about 7 feet, and since it takes a track log recording every 30 seconds, if i was moving while shooting, depending on how fast i was moving (500+ mph in the air, 2mph hiking, etc), the location could be off a bit.
Extending the geocoding of the pictures a little further, I used Jet Photo studio to create this interactive photo gallery, with the Google Maps API. Each photo is placed on the map at around where it was taken. Additionally, all the (public) photos have map links, which will place them on the map.
These flowers were blooming in a recently burned down forest. Regrowth and renewal.
Media Links:
Flickr photoset of Alaska 2008. If you’re a friend of mine on flickr, you should be able to see slightly more pictures than what I’ve made public.
During the backcountry portion of the trip, my brother and I found a crashed NOAA Weather Balloon with an attached Radiosonde. I’m writing about that in a separate post.
We made a bunch of friends in Alaska. Here’s the blurbs on a few of them…
Andy Morrision runs Alaska Backcountry Access, his own outdoor guide company. Andy is a great guide, and does a ton of trips. We went jet boating up the river, and kayaking with him
Rachel Drinkard lives in Girdwood, and works as a reporter and writer. Her blog, Anarchy in the AK, covers all sorts of Alaskan issues and stories. She came boating and kayaking with us.
Ron Tenny and his wife Michelle run the Hidden Creek Bed and Breakfast, and were very hospitable to us. We had a great time staying there, an awesome breakfast, and fun discussing the area, and the industry with Ron and his son and daughter.
In Girdwood, we grabbed a relaxing dinner and felt like locals at Chair 5.
The marina in Seward, Alaska. The Chugatch mountains are jutting out in the background.
And for the videos – I’m posting up two videos to this post, but there are many more – including the full footage from the weather balloon. Those will go up in a bit, after I’m done editing them together etc.
Ermine Hill, Denali State Park, Alaska
Taking a break on after hiking to the top of Ermine Hill, a small peak within the Kesugi Ridge, in Denali State Park, Alaska. The view up there was incredible, and the terrain made us feel like we were on another planet. After finding a weather balloon crashed, I kept on expecting to find a lunar rover or something.
Flying Next To Denali
During our flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi, we flew right next to Denali, making sharp turns to weave in and out of the peaks, and through the clouds.
RSS Feed of photo set
