Aerial photos Archives

August 16, 2011September 18, 2011

Isle Casino Cape Girardeau Construction Update

I was riding my bike north on the new (to me) river trail that ends at Sloan Creek. I could hear construction equipment on the land side of the floodwall, so I welcomed an opportunity to go up a gravel road leading to the top of the levee to take a peek. Here’s what I saw. This is on the north end of the Casino construction zone. (You can click on the photo to make it larger.)

Aerial from April

This is what the area looked like in April. The recent photo was taken just south of the power substation in this picture. You can see the white concrete river trail running along the water’s edge. Where the concrete seawall ends and the earthen levee begins, it jogs to the east. Just beyond it, you can see the gravel access road I went up. The photo was taken on the south end of the gravel area, looking slightly southwest.

Here are other casino area aerial photos taken in April 2011 and November 2010.

August 11, 2011January 7, 2016

Red Carpet and Road Kill

For those of you who have been tracking my car saga, I elected to take it to LaGrand’s Transmission in Cape to have a rebuilt trannie put in it. Several other repairs will wait until I get it back down to Florida for my regular shop to work on it.

I can get all the repairs done for about a third of what a good used vehicle was going to cost. A new one was going to be in the $30K range. I LIKE not having car payments, so I’m going to roll the dice that I can get a couple more years out of my Honda Odyssey. Anyway, the decision meant that I had to fly back to Cape instead of driving Wife Lila’s car and ending up with TWO cars in Missouri.

We’ll deal with my trip out of order because of the photos I took. When I got into St. Louis’ Lambert Airport, I was amazed at how much damage had been done by the April tornado that roared through there. A lot of windows remain boarded up.

It’s a wonder no one was killed

When I look at all of the windows that must have blown out, it’s a wonder that no one was killed.

We have enough fuel for an hour

Keep looking at the Lambert photos while I recount the first part of my journey on Southwest from West Palm Beach to Tampa.

About half way between West Palm Beach and Tampa, the pilot came on the PA: “Some of you may have sensed that we’re not heading exactly to the Tampa airport. There’s a storm sitting right on top of it. We have enough fuel to fly circles for an hour. It should have moved on by then.”

About 30 minutes later, he said, “The storm is still sitting over the airport, so we’ll keep circling.”

Not long after that, he announced that we might have to return to West Palm Beach for more fuel if we weren’t cleared to land soon.

How I imagine the cockpit conversation went

Copilot: “I TOLD you that we should top off the tank before we left West Palm Beach, but, no, you said, ‘The gas in Tampa is cheaper. We have plenty to make it there.’ NOW look at us. Well, let me tell you, Mr. I Can Save a Buck for the Company, if we have to set ‘er down out here in the middle of nowhere, it’s gonna be YOU with a gas can knocking on the farmer’s door begging for fuel.”

Fortunately, a few minutes later, the pilot reported we were cleared for the approach. To his credit, either the tower was giving him good vectors or he was doing a good job reading the radar to miss the worst cells. We had lightning flashing around us, but the ride wasn’t too bumpy.

Can you open the exit door?

The Tampa – St. Louis flight was pretty uneventful. I lucked out and got a center seat in an exit row. When the flight attendant came by to give us the standard exit row speech, concluding with, “Do you agree that you can perform those duties?” I replied, “Yes, mam, you won’t believe how fast I can get out that door.”

“I’ll count that as a yes,” she said.

Cape Air promises red carpet treatment

After I did the piece on flying Cape Air, local manager Jennifer Huffman and I have become Facebook friends. I gave her fair warning that I was going to be on one of her flights. That set off this (approximate) dialog:

Her: “We’ll roll out the red carpet for you.”
Me: “Cape has a red carpet?”
Her: : “It does when you fly in, Ken. You’re a celebrity! I will even have an in-flight meal waiting for you. :)”
Me: “It’s not going to be an armadillo on the half-shell that you picked up on the way to the airport, is it?”
Her: “”LOL, I promise no road kill, I save the best possums for the family meals.”

Where’s my possum?

Right after I managed to navigate my way from Southwest to Cape Air’s terminal, I was paged to the check-in counter. That’s never a good sign. That’s where they tell you that your luggage is overweight, has been shredded, lost or all of the above, or that the flight is overbooked, or that the flight has been cancelled.

Instead, the very nice woman gave me a green tote bag that said “Valuables Tote for Wing or Cabin.” Inside was a nice cup filled with bubble gum and two small boxes of mints labeled In-Flight meal. There was also a small Ziploc bag containing what I presumed was once a warm paper towel. (I asked Jennifer if my VIP treatment would include a warm towel.)

No possum. I saw Pilot Sherry Murdoch walking around on the tarmac chewing on something. I don’t want to point any fingers, but I think I know where my possum might have gone. I looked for evidence of grease on her chin, but she must have cleaned it up.

Flies: welcome to Missouri

While waiting for the flight to be called, I wandered into the Mens room. Inside, I figured that I was back in Missouri, for sure: there was a fly perched in the urinal. Then I looked left and right and saw identical flies in exactly the same position. They were realistic-looking DRAWINGS of flies. I don’t know if they were added as a touch of whimsy or to give a target to aim at, but I got a chuckle out of them.

They were classier than the chin-high spitoon (sic) spotted in an Advance restroom.

Big Guy and our plane

This was about the last photo I shot of the ground until we got back to Cape. We were flying too high in too much haze and cloud to make it worthwhile once we got above about 1,200 feet.

We had a couple of white-knuckle passengers on board who didn’t seem to comfortable with some of the bucks, pitches and yaws when we were going through some of the clouds. I wasn’t worried, though. I’ve flown through a lot worse and the pilot seemed to be taking it in stride.

Unlike the other passengers, I had bigger worries. Pilot Murdoch normally flies a Boston route. She’s just filling in for a bit, so I was pretty sure she’s not well acclimated to fine Missouri cuisine yet. They don’t get exposed to many possum dishes in Massachusetts.

Mayday! Mayday!

I kept a close eye on the pilot, rehearsing what I would do if she went into possum failure at the yoke.I figured I’d have another passenger shove her aside, then I’d move into the command seat, put on her headphones and key the microphone:

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Cessna 402C November 6765 Tango with five souls on board. We are in the clouds approximately 23 miles south of St. Louis at 4,000 feet, flying on a 172 heading, straight and level. The good news is that all gauges are in the green. The bad news is that our pilot is incapacitated, possibly due to acute possum poisoning. The worse news is that nobody here is a pilot. I’m pretty sure I can get ‘er on the ground, but that’s only because of the law of gravity.”

At that point, I unkey the microphone and scream like a little girl. What do you expect? I’m a photographer not a twin-engine-rated pilot.

Cheated death again

Fortunately, Captain Murdoch got us back into Cape County. About five miles out, she turned around and made camera-clicking gestures at me. I took that to mean that we must be cleared to land, and I started to shoot her touchdown, which was much smoother than mine would have been.

We got our red carpet

When the plane puttered to a stop, Agent Jeff Sutton rolled out a red carpet for us. Well, it was actually a small red rug, but proportionally speaking, for an airport the size of Cape’s, I’ll rate it a carpet.

It just dawned on me that my window was covered with so many greasy noseprints that I had to scrub a clean spot to shoot through this afternoon. I’m wondering now if maybe I’ve been suspecting the wrong person: I wonder if my special in-flight meal could have been lost to passenger possum pilfering? Perhaps?

August 5, 2011September 18, 2011

Emily Runs from Ken

In the middle of the week, it looked like Hurricane Emily was going to land right on West Palm Beach on Saturday at 2 in the afternoon. That’s when we decided to cut short our Seattle trip. Looks like our decision to head home was enough to chase the storm away.

I loved covering hurricanes

I loved covering hurricanes. The only thing was, I had a lousy track record for predicting where they were going to make landfall in those pre-Internet, pre-Weather Channel days. If I flew into Biloxi, it would hit Corpus Christi. It got to be such a joke that the general manager said he was going to put in my job description that I would be lashed to the flag pole in front of the building in case a storm was coming our way. “They never hit where you are.”

Hurricane Elena was the most frustrating

The worst was Elena in 1985 or thereabouts. I flew into Biloxi or Mobile to find out that the storm had curved east and was projected to go ashore in Tampa. The reporter and I chased that bleeping storm all the way across the Florida Panhandle and down the Big Bend, even driving around an abandoned roadblock on the bridge over Apalachicola Bay.

Being out there in the middle of the bridge with the waves breaking over it caused my rearend to bite holes out of the seat cushion. “You know, in 25 or 30 years,” I told my partner, “some shrimper’s net is going to snag a rusted-out car with two skeletons and a lot of photo equipment in it…”

When we got to the Tampa area, the office called to say that the storm had stalled offshore, then had recurved back west again. We got back in our car and retraced our steps until we finally caught up with it near Pascagoula, Miss., after a bunch of adventures I ‘ll share later.

“Which one of us is nuts?”

On the way back home, I stopped to talk with a woman on Cedar Key, an island on Florida’s west coast where Elena was supposed to come ashore. She told me she hadn’t evacuated.

“Are you nuts? The water would have cut off your only way out and the storm surge would have been higher than anything on the island. Why didn’t you leave?”

“You just told me that you chased this storm for almost 2,800 miles,” she countered. “I stayed in one place and let it come to me. Which one of us is nuts?” She had a point.

[Editor’s note: The photo at the right is of a tree that blew down at our house during 2004’s Hurricane Frances. 2005 was worse. It’s a lot more fun to cover a disaster in somebody else’s town.]

‘Unclean! Unclean!”

The plane ride from Seattle to Baltimore was pretty painless. When two folks sat down next to me in the bulkhead, I said, “I’m going to warn you. I’m the passenger I always hate to sit next to. I have a cold. I’m going to do everything I can to keep from sneezing or coughing in your direction, but I thought you should know. With any luck, and all the meds I’ve taken, I should pass out and not bother you.”

They looked at me like I was wearing a bell around my neck and was chanting, “Unclean! Unclean” like a leper in the Bible. Unfortunately for them, the plane was full and they were trapped. When the flight attendant said that they needed someone to exchange seats to accommodate a family with small children, they punched the call button like they were on a game show. Unfortunately, someone else was faster.

I put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and listened / dozed to an audio book. My symptoms were pretty much under control on the flight, but, when the guy sneezed getting off the plane, I said, “Sorry.”

The passenger from hell

When we got on the flight from Baltimore, I forgot to get my headphones out of the overhead compartment. Figuring it was only a two-hour flight, I didn’t bother to fish them out. A guy headed to Delray Beach was a seat over from me and we were hoping the middle seat would stay empty. Nope. Full plane. A woman sat down.

At first I thought she might have a speech impediment that caused her words to slur. I HOPED she had a speech impediment. Nope. She was sloshed. Talkatively sloshed.

I gave her my I-have-a-cold-I’m-going-to-sleep speech and turned my back to her. Whenever I woke up, I could hear her bending the ear of the poor guy next to me. Actually, Wife Lila, two rows away, could hear her holding court.

“Quit talking”

One hundred miles out of West Palm Beach, the poor guy had had all he could take. “I told her, ‘quit talking. I need to get some sleep,'” he confided when she slipped out to use the John. He signaled me when she got out of the lavatory so I could continue to pretend to sleep.

That’s when she started punching me, “I have to talk with someone,” she wailed. In fairness, she wasn’t a bad person, just an annoying one. She was coming back to deal with a family emergency, so the other guy and I were inclined to cut her some slack. Right up until we managed to open the exit door and shove her out at 17,000 feet.

That’s when I vowed to ALWAYS have my headphones with me.

It’s good to be back home. The first thing I saw was the open kitchen cabinet that was supposed to remind me that the garbage disposal had started leaking the morning we left for the Northwest.

August 3, 2011July 1, 2021

Trotline Fishing on The Mississippi

After seeing that the flooding had gone down, I decided to drive down Old Highway 61 that parallels I-55 south of Sprigg Street and ends at a boat ramp. After taking a scenic photo, I noticed a couple throwing a cast net. [Click on any photo to make it larger.]

Aerial of Diversion Channel

Ed and Melinda Roberts of Jackson were trying to snag enough bait to put out two trotlines where the Mississippi River meets up with the ditch that is just north of the Diversion Channel. Ed Calls it the North Cut Ditch. I’ve heard it called the Little Ditch and at least one topographic map labels it the Dutchtown Ditch.

I was able to snap a picture of the Diversion Channel and the North Cut from the Cape Air Flight I was on. The Channel is on the right, the larger of the two canals.

“It’s all about stuffing the freezer”

Ed is a guy who fishes for the fun of eating fish. “I hope to have 400-500 pounds of fish in the freezer before the season is over. It’s all about stuffing the freezer.” Most of them will be channel catfish or blue cats. His biggest catch was an 82-pound blue on a trotline. “I WISH I had caught it on a rod.”

Enough bait to do the job

The water was boiling with fish, mostly gars, which the couple tossed up on the bank to join dozens more. “Most of them were killed by bow hunters,” he said. After about half a dozen casts, he brought up enough bait to do the job.

Heat killed many fish

“I’ve never seen shad die like this in the summertime. It’s the heat that’s killing them,” he explained. The hot water also limits how deep he can set his lines.

Nature’s cleanup crew

Maggots are hard at work cleaning up anything edible left behind by the flood and fishermen. “It’s a good thing,” Ed said.

Launching the boat

When I asked if I could follow them down to where they was going to put the boat in the water, ED offered me something better: a ride to watch them put out the lines.

Video: how to set out a trotline

Here’s your opportunity to see how to set out a trotline.

Motor wasn’t running right

When we started out, the motor was missing and sputtering. I wondered if they had invited me along to be a galley slave if the engine conked out. Ed assured me that wasn’t the case. He said that a plug was fouled and he wouldn’t go far from the ramp until he had it cleared.

Headed out the Diversion Channel

Before long, we were headed out the Diversion Channel to meet the Mississippi River. I’ll run scenic shots from the ride another day. I always thought of the Channel as a sterile ditch, but it’s a beautiful waterway with interesting trees on both sides.

Northbound on the Mississippi

Before long, we were northbound on the river. The boat felt a lot smaller out there.

Checking out the motor

When we got to where he was going to set his lines, he still wasn’t happy with the way the motor was running, so he left Melinda and me on the bank while he did a high-speed run in the river until he was satisfied.

Baiting the hooks

I couldn’t shoot both stills and video at the same time, so you’ll have to watch the video if you want to see what’s involved in setting a trotline. Here he is baiting one of the hooks with a fish he caught when we first met. If he’s in the river, he’s permitted to have 50 hooks; if he’s fishing in the ditches, he can have a maximum of 33.

Getting close to sunset

Ed was starting to run out of daylight, so he decided not to set out both lines. When we pulled into the bank, I asked what time the mosquitoes would show up. “I’ve got pepper spray, so I can hold ’em off for a little while while you make a run for it,” I offered.

Ed and Melinda assured me that they had plenty of bug repellent, but Ed said he’d run me back to the ramp before it got dark. They planned to stay a good part of the night running the line about every two hours and fishing with a rod and reel in the meantime.

It was a great experience. There’s a lesson here: you sure meet some nice people if you just get out of your steel cage from time to time and talk to the folks you come across. When I woke up that morning, I never dreamed that I’d end the day in a small boat on the Mississippi River.