In the Summertime...

you should keep your snowboots, shovels and winter coats handy!

Here it is, mid May. Grass is green. Trees have mostly leafed out.

And here comes the snow. Not just a little either. Over a day and a half of nearly steady snow, we ended up with 11 inches of very wet heavy snow.

It was amazing really. It looked like middle of January, not May. Temps hovered around 30, just a little too cold for rain. And it just kept snowing.

Snow hanging very heavy in the trees. By Friday afternoon it was warming up a couple degrees, snow started coming down. The heavy snow damaged a LOT of trees, broke limbs, etc. This heavy snow really did not come at a very good time. A week or so earlier probably would have been a lot better. But hey - summer officially begins in about a month!

Heavy Metal

Had a visitor to town this past weekend - one of the few still flying B17 bombers from World War II. The Madras Maiden. An awesome aircraft, and kept up in very good shape.

This plane was built in 1944. That makes it 73 years old this year! It never saw combat duty, but was used as a trainer mostly. With less glamorous work after the war, eventually bought and restored to the current condition you see today. If it had been shot up a lot during the war, it probably would have been scrapped or at least not be airworthy like most other surviving B17s.

A head on shot. Would be better without all the people in the way, but that's pretty hard to avoid. Lots of people want to see these old warbirds.

A shot of the nose art on the plane. That is one shiny plane. 

Another shot from the back. It's big, but inside the crew didn't really have a lot of room. 

Took a fisheye shot of the front. From this perspective it looks a bit like a giant bug!

The business end of the tail turret, called the Cheyenne turret. Because it was built and installed here in Cheyenne. The planes were built by Boeing in Washington state, then flown to Cheyenne for the rear turret installation and further testing, before continuing on their way to war duty.

If you notice the big building behind the plane in the first two photos, that was supposedly THE hangar where the turret was installed in B17s. Over 70 years ago. It's a homecoming trip!

I didn't get a chance to climb through the plane - when I was going to they were clearing it out before a flight. Which cost $450. I skipped it, but sure would be awesome to take that ride.

However, you can watch this YouTube video from a local radio station- it was shot of this plane's visit to town, and has some flight footage along with some other interesting video -  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSQX7ypBEo

I did get a little video of them starting up the engines before the flight. (Has a lot of wind noise. Thanks to it being Wyoming, and a camera that doesn't have any way to block wind noise)

And then they flew away...

Off they go, into the wild blue yonder. Zoomed way in for this shot. A very interesting visit from a very pretty Maiden! Safe travels!