Drone flying as a COVID-19 family fun activity

I must give credit where credit is due because my wife taught me the fun of scouting photo shoot locations. Sure, it was for her growing photography business, but I just enjoyed having an excuse to get outside and explore new places. Sometimes it involved hiking in the woods, sometimes it involved discovering new cities and towns, sometimes it involved going to familiar locations and looking at them with a different eye. That to me has been the fun of my little drone–packing up and spending the afternoon exploring someplace new or old. And that’s what we’ve done the past couple of weekends.

Our first trip was to the Tridge in Midland, Michigan. I mean, it’s a three way bridge over the junction of two different rivers. Who wouldn’t wonder what that looked like from above?

The very next day we explored the skies over nearby Bay City–this time using the top floor of the parking garage of the Double Tree Hotel as our launch pad.

Our finale for that day was Saginaw Valley State University where, despite my strong desire to shoot a video flying under the arch and over campus, I am not that confident in my flying skills at this point.

As you can see from the images of my youngest son screwing around, we had an assistant with us for most of the time. In a world where we have to find new ways to spend time in a world so heavily impacted by COVID-19, I must say that drone flying is a pretty good family activity. It got us out and about, our 9 year old could take a turn too (with adequate supervision) and it was safely socially distanced the whole time. Now, if we could only make it a little warmer in Michigan this time of the year…