Category Archives: Travel

Washington Pass, North Cascades

I love the North Cascades Highway (Highway 20) in Washington for breathtaking views and a peaceful retreat. The Washington Pass Vista Point offers panoramic views of majestic mountain peaks. Take your time and appreciate the splendid viewpoints, including the Washington Pass Vista Point. It’s a must-see attraction for nature and outdoor enthusiasts, tourists, and anyone looking to retreat from everyday hustle and bustle.

Getting a drone photo from the pass has been on my must-do list for several years. Finally, this past week, I got the opportunity. There was a little smoke in the air, making the air not quite as clear as I would have liked. But still, not bad. And we got some clouds to add interest to the sky. [Note: I did check to be sure there was no aerial fire fighting or TFRs in the area to be sure I wouldn’t be interfering with fire fighting operations.]

I had taken my almost new (to me) Mavic 2 Pro drone with me just for this occasion. Three batteries were charged the night before we left for the journey. All equipment was checked and re-checked to be sure I hadn’t left something out, or forgot to charge a battery.

We drove over the pass on Thursday and camped an Klipchuck Campground, a few miles west of Mazama. We stopped at the Vista Point on our way over Washington Pass. The sun was low in the sky and the valleys were in deep shadow.

If you have not driven over the North Cascades Highway, you really should add it to your to-do list. It is a spectacular drive any time of year. Earlier in the year all of the mountains around will be snow-capped.

Below is a photo of Diablo Lake from the Diablo Lake Vista Point.

Diablo Lake from the Diablo Lake Vista Point

The next day we spent the morning having breakfast and shopping in town – or towns: Winthrop and Twisp. If you haven’t been to eqpd in Twisp, you really should check it out. They make very cool bags. After this stop, we now own more than 10 of their bags in various sizes, colors and styles. In their manufacturing facility in Twisp they have a good assortment of bags you can purchase. There are also many seconds that can be purchased at a discount. Quite often the problem with the bag is difficult or impossible to spot. One of the bags we got on this trip (the one on the left in the photo below) had a very minor defect in the pattern printed on the bag.

eqpd bags, made in Twisp, WA
eqpd bags, made in Twisp, WA

After shopping we headed back to the Washington Pass Vista Point. Scattered clouds had come in, giving an interesting sky. We walked up  to the overlook, then looked around for a place away from people to launch my drone. We found a nice flat rock, probably 15-20 feet across, several hundred feet from the main viewpoint with no trees above it to snag the drone on takeoff.

I flew my drone for almost 20 minutes, taking a number of still photos and several panorama shots. The 360° panorama below was the best of the bunch. From where the drone was you can see both sides of the pass, including the hairpin turn of the highway south of the Vista Point.

Click on the image below and move your mouse to spin the image so you can look in all directions. To view full screen, click on the [] in the upper right hand corner.

The 360° panorama above was taken with my Mavic 2 Pro (26 RAW photos), edited with Lightroom to try to tame the blown-out sky, then stitched into a 360° Panorama with PTGui, and uploaded to kuula.co for viewing.

Solis Wi-Fi Hotspot

Last fall we were traveling and spent some time in the Tucson / Lazydays KOA Resort. As part of the amenities, we were given free Wi-Fi access during out stay. The Internet there is managed by Tengo Internet, which we understand loosely means “we have Internet.” Ummm. Maybe. Sometimes. I think it can be interpreted similarly to “Yes, we have no bananas.”

Yes, we had Wi-Fi. We were right across a street from the Wi-Fi antenna, and we had a good Wi-Fi signal. Having a good Wi-Fi signal is not synonymous with having good Internet. Or any Internet at times.

I found that at about 4:00 am I had decent Internet. At 4:00 pm the Internet was so slow it was practically unusable. At 8:00 pm it was so slow that my phone said I had no Internet and it switched to cellular data, at $10/gigabyte. Ouch!!

Tengo Internet had a paid option that they guaranteed would provide 5 megabits/second speeds. I paid. It didn’t help. I still essentially had no Internet connectivity at the busy times of day, and I don’t think I ever saw 5 Mb/s speeds (except maybe at 4:00 am).

After a week of this, when we were depending on having Internet available, I decided it was time to find a solution. I looked into standard mobile hotspot providers, like Verizon and T-Mobile. The problem was that you had to pay a monthly subscription fee whether you were using the hotspot or not. And since we wanted it just when traveling, sometimes for a few days at a time, that didn’t seem like a good solution. And what if the provider I chose didn’t have good coverage in the area I needed it?

Eventually I stumbled across SolisWiFi.co, at that time, SkyRoam. (Some areas of their website still identifies it as SkyRoam.) I purchased a Solis Lite WiFi hotspot, about the size of a hockey puck.

Solis Lite Hotspot
Solis Lite Hotspot

This device has a built-in battery that lasts up to 16 hours. Add an app to your mobile phone to control the hotspot and purchase Internet access, and you’re ready to go. When powered on, the Solis Lite will find the best provider to connect to, and provide you with 4G Internet. It’s not 5G. But good 4G was plenty fast enough for us.

You can connect up to 10 devices to the hotspot. That easily covered both of our mobile phones, an iPad, a laptop PC, and an Echo Dot. Range was easily 20 feet or more.

The Solis Lite worked well when sitting around camp. When we went to the pool, we took it with us. Several times we went to a picnic area in Saguaro National Park, and took the hotspot with us there. We had no cell phone service – none at all. Yet the hotspot was able to find enough signal from some carrier that we were able to access the Internet without problem.

We also carried the Solis Lite in the car when we were traveling. We typically track our trip on maps and other applications on my iPad or our phones, and that map updating can use significant data. Using the Solis Lite hotspot in the car kept us from using our expensive cellular data.

Where does it work? They say in over 130 countries worldwide. USA coverage seems to be pretty good. I don’t recall encountering any place that it didn’t work for us.

How much? The hotspot was about $125. There are several purchase plans for Internet usage. You can purchase by the megabyte, by the day or by the month (with usage caps). If you can predict your usage, the monthly plans are probably the cheapest (your mileage may vary). As I write this, a USA monthly subscription that includes 10GB of data is $40 (there are several other options). That’s $4/GB, much cheaper than my phone data plan of $10/GB (I’ll be shopping around soon…). If you exceed your monthly plan, you can add data at any time. Global plans are a bit more expensive than USA plans.

If you choose to purchase by the Megabyte, that starts at $8 for 1 GB, $35 for 5GB, $60 for 10GB, and $100 for 20GB.

The Global Unlimited Daypass is $9. Unlimited data. Anywhere. Great if you need data just for a day. You can buy these in advance (watch for sales) and activate them when you need.

Check the plans carefully. They seem to change from time to time, so don’t assume that a plan you had six months ago is identical to the plan you can get now.

Where can you get the Solis Lite? Last fall it was available from Amazon. I purchased it directly from SkyRoam, and was very disappointed in the shipping. They don’t seem to care that you might want it soon. It took several days for it to ship, and I think they paid extra to have USPS delay it for a few more days. Right now, Solis WiFi’s site says it’s out of stock. There is one left on Amazon (search for Skyroam Solis). I also found it at Target and Ebay. It’s out of stock at several other places, which makes me wonder if there is a supply problem, or if they may have stopped manufacturing that model and may be coming out with something new.

Was the Solis Wi-Fi Hotspot without problems? No. Several times the hotspot locked up with an error message in the app, and I had to power it off and back on to get it working. When I tried to change the password through the app, I found that the display was white on white – not exactly readable. At one point I had a few GB of data left in the monthly plan, and I was metering it out to avoid buying extra data to make it through the month. The plan expired many hours before the app indicated it would and I lost the remaining data. I suspect a problem in the app having to do with the difference between UTC and local time caused that, but support was unable to tell me what had happened. Overall, though, it worked well.

Note that my analysis and purchase was about six months ago. Things change quickly, so check around for other options. That said, we have been happy with the Solis Lite, and I think we saved some money on our one trip with it. There is a convenience to being able to access multiple carriers. Keep an eye on the app or the Solis website for deals. They frequently have discounts on data (there is a 30% off monthly plans right now). You can always buy data for use in the future.