Geoff Arnold

For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of driving over to Deer Island to get some photos of the Boston city skyline from the east, and also watch the planes at Boston’s Logan Airport. As you can see in this Google map, Deer Island is close to the end of runway 27 (the east-west runway at Boston). When I saw that today’s forecast was for west winds and sunny skies, I decided that the moment had come. My hope was that the winds would be strong enough that they’d have to use runway 27 for landings; this would be great for photography since from Deer Island I’d have the sun behind me. Unfortunately the winds were light to non-existent, so most aircraft were landing on 33L and taking off from 27.

Nevertheless I was able to get some decent pictures. I drove to the end of Tafts Avenue, left my car in the little public park, and walked widdershins around Deer Island, taking photos of planes, city, sea ducks, islands, and the extraordinary waste water treatment plant whose giant ovoids dominate the island. (Purists will point out that Deer Island is actually joined to the mainland, and thus shouldn’t be referred to as an island. In fact it was an island, until the hurricane of 1938 rearranged things.) I spent a couple of hours exploring the place, staying out of the way of the joggers and professional dog-walkers who seemed to be everywhere.

So now that I know how to get there (MassPike -> Ted Williams Tunnel -> Rt.145), how to negotiate the mess at the Rt.1A/Rt.145 intersection, and where to park, I shall be watching the NWS for predictions of bright, sunny mornings with strong westerly winds….

This entry was posted on Monday, April 10th, 2006 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Aviation, Photos, Travel.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.