Sunrise / Sunset

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total  (hrs)
03   Jan 2009	N21481	5G0 (Le Roy, NY), local flight	0.9	679.3
04   Jan 2009	N21481	5G0 (Le Roy, NY) - BQR (Lancaster, NY) -  5G0	1.4	680.7

Poor weather and a plethora of obligations conspired to make entries in my logbook scarce after November 2008.  During the first weekend of the New Year, I managed back to back sunset and sunrise flights.  Tethered close to home base by time constraints, I nonetheless enjoyed shoving air molecules around in my back yard.  It was also a great opportunity to try out the new camera I received from my wonderful in-laws this Christmas.  A combination of 12X optical zoom and image stabilization will make for photographic opportunities that would have been impossible with my prior equipment.

I flew south to Letchworth State Park.  The crimson sunset and accumulated snow worked together to highlight fine detail in the wall of the northern gorge.

 
My Warrior's old tech wing with each rivet and screw head highlighted obliquely by the setting sun.  Below, the Genesee River winds through Letchworth State Park.

I returned to Letchworth the next morning.  At the right of frame is the "Archery Overlook", where ground-based visitors to the canyon get an incredible view of the gorge.

 
The Glen Iris Inn (far right) glowed in the sunrise, but Middle Falls remained in the shadow of the river gorge.  Temperatures were hovering around 10°F that morning when I left the ground and the trees nearest the 107 foot waterfall were visibly frosted with mist rising from the river basin. 

Another angle on the Glen Iris Inn and Middle Falls taken from 2500' AGL at maximum zoom on the camera, which kept me and my airplane well out of the freezing moisture rising from the waterfall.  The image-stabilization obviously helps capture a crisp image, even at high zoom.

This is the gorge wall just downstream from Middle Falls.  We didn't have sheer rock walls like this where I grew up.  Mist in the foreground is rising from the base of the waterfall.

Meet New York state's newest cash crop.  And what a crop it is, too...always in season and continuously harvested.  These windmills are springing up across New York's countryside at an astounding rate.