Saginaw River Year End Review: December 2024

This is it, the last review post from the 2024 season:  The best of December.  In what seemed like a year where there was more overcast skies then sun when out taking photos, there were still a lot of great photo opportunities.  It was nice to be able to get some photos of the boats moving through the ice, a few sunrise/sunset photos, a bucket list trip up to Port Gypsum to catch Sam Laud loading there, and overall, just an incident free season taking photos of 57 different boats.  December only had 6 commercial vessel passages, bringing the year end total to 196 vessels.  While the monthly total was less than December 2023, the year end total was 27 vessels more.

For my fourth season flying the drone, December ended with 15 flights covering 19.76 miles, over 2 hours and 43 minutes.  That gave a grand total for 2024 of 206 flights, covering 233.34 miles, over 35 hours and 26 minutes.  Thanks for following along!  Hope you enjoyed the weekly review series!

Saginaw River Year End Review: November 2024

This is going to be a huge photo dump for November.  What a month!  Herbert C. Jackson with Northern Lights on the horizon, Saginaw on her namesake river, shooting photos of her in three different locations.  The last boats through Lafayette Bridge before demolition started, and plenty of tug/barge action.  There were 28 vessel passages in November, bringing us to 190 passages for the year to date.  By the end of November, I had now photographed 57 different vessels for the year.

November was also my biggest month ever for drone flights, with 31 total.  This worked out to 5 hours and 8 minutes of time in the air and 38.72 miles covered.  For the year to date at the end of November, I had flown 166 flights, covering 183.06 miles, over 28 hours 14 minutes.

25 years of Alpena on the Saginaw River

Here is one photo of Alpena on the Saginaw River from each year that I have one, beginning with the year 2000, and going forward through the 2024 season.