Went to Airfest yesterday and had a great time. The weather started off kind of iffy. It was raining off and on while we drove the 80 miles to Janesville. When we got to the airport it was still very cloudy and looking like it could downpour at any time. Around 12:30 the clouds began to break up and pretty soon we had a very warm, sunny day.

The performances were great. Many stunt pilots, an F-16 demonstration, and demonstrations by the Navy Leapfrogs and the Army Golden Knights parachute teams. Of course the highlight of the show was the Blue Angels. And as usual, the rocked!!

I shot 873 pictures yesterday. That’s a one day record for me. Total number of pictures for Lynne and I was 955!! Plus Lynne shot video of the Blue Angels. It was a very busy day. But what a day!

So I’m sure you guys want to see some pictures, right? Well here’s all 873 of mine in the order that they were taken.

That will have to hold you guys over until I get some editing done

Here is a really cool post from Oddee.com
It’s the Ten Most Amazing Bridges in the world.
Very cool stuff!

Heading over to Janesville tomorrow to the 2009 Southern Wisconsin AriFEST. The Blue Angels will be making their only appearance of the year in this area. Hoping to get some great pictures of them. I love the shots I got last year in Chicago, but I’m thinking this year may be better. We’ll be at the airport so maybe I can get them taking off and landing. And I should have the sun at my back instead of looking right into it like last year. Really hoping the weather holds. 20% chance of thunderstorms for tomorrow.

Speaking of thunderstorms, it appears the Sierra is getting quite a few lately. Heard from Karl who said a big storm rolled through the Central Valley last evening. Lots of lightning, hail and winds up to 60 mph.  Sounds like one of our storms back here. He also said that a number of fires were started by the lightning and that they were put out quickly. I also saw on Twitter that a number of fires were started in Yosemite by lightning. Nothing out of hand though.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain back here the last few days, but no big thunderstorms. That may change next week though as things begin to pick back up in the middle of the country. We’ll have to see what happens.

Here’s a video of Yosemite in the early 1940′s. Look’s like it was a silent short film.It runs 12 minutes but is worth watching.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DixbB70B7s[/youtube]

A couple comments on the video.

• First off at the 2:30 mark you see why we currently have the bear problems we have in Yosemite as the tourist are happily feeding the baby bears.

• At the 8:13 mark those deer sure look a lot like elk to me. How about you? And of course we must feed them too. (The deer being fed are mule deer at least.)

• I love the “modern” sky lift at 10:05. And it seems that this lift takes the skiers all the way up into the Sierra Backcountry!! Wow!

Other than these few things it’s a pretty neat video.