Back in the sky!

Monday 30 September
We are now back home in Ohio, after a great vacation with our daughters Jen, Laura, and Laura’s boyfriend Liam, on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State, in the far north west, for those not familiar with US geography. We had seen Jen, Laura and Liam off yesterday, and we spent the night at a hotel fairly near the airport for our 10.20 am flight this morning. Fortunately the traffic treated us well this morning, and we arrived at the airport in decent time. We had time to buy a coffee from Starbucks while we waited. We pulled away from the gate on time, but had to wait a while for our turn to take off. The skies were clear in Seattle, affording us some nice aerial views, including Mount Rainier in the distance. My collage starts in the top right corner, and goes anti clockwise, finishing with coming into land at Cincinnati Airport in the center right photo, where it was overcast and raining, though still quite warm. We arrived home as the light was beginning to fade, but still light enough to see all the tree debris covering our back garden and patio, courtesy of Storm Helene. When we left, we were suffering from a prolonged drought. However Storm Helene made up some of the deficit, bringing us about 4 - 5 inches of rain over a couple of days, according to one of our neighbours, accompanied by strong winds. Several of our neighbours appear to have had trees come down, judging from the piles of branches lined up at the edge of the road. So we were quite lucky. Better still, our finished basement stayed dry! Much to be thankful for. The pictures out of the south eastern states are devastating, especially western North Carolina. Thankfully, our son Philip who lives in the Venice area of Florida, and our daughter Jen and husband Jason who live in Atlanta Georgia, came through the storm OK.
Back blips from our trip will follow soon!