Silicon Valley

From our historic headquarters at Moffett Field, a former airship base, you have the entire San Francisco Bay Area, with its perspectives of nature and humans side by side, to explore! What will you pick to do first??

Our tours start with an effortless and rapid ascent from the airfield up over NASA Ames. Below you is the iconic structure of Hangar One and the green roofed Hangars Two and Three – among the largest wooden structures in the world. Stretching out to the freeway are the giant sheds and ducts that form the NASA Ames wind tunnels where all manner of spacecraft and aircraft have been tested. Sometimes your companions on the runway at NASA will include the jets that the astronauts use to visit for training or even the road tests for local electric vehicle manufacturers!

If you have selected our Ultimate Bay Area Tour, you will be heading north, taking in the square blocks of the research parks, colorful geometry of the schools and their sports fields, and the mesmerizing flow of traffic on freeways before, wind and fog permitting, cruising out to the coast. The rows of houses running down to the beach and ocean are starkly contrasted by the green of the Golden Gate Park and the Twin Peaks. And if the fog is around, you’ll get the unusual thrill of seeing it trickling down the hillsides and over the landscape below. You fly past the Golden Gate bridge itself, past the Waterfront and Downtown, Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge and then head south back down the Bay. Oftentimes we are allowed to fly directly over San Francisco airport, a real treat from above. Shoreline Amphitheater marks the return to Moffett field and the colorful salt evaporation ponds - home to some of the weirdest life-forms on Earth!

Our Geek Tour takes you on a 90-minute flight over the locations and companies that make Silicon Valley famous. You’ll pass the solar panels and bright umbrellas of Google, the round towers of Yahoo and Oracle and the sprawling campus at Infinite Loop (a.k.a Apple Computer) among many other top technology companies. Sitting high on the hills is the Big Dish, a 150ft radio antenna that studies the universe. Stanford University, with its russet buildings and famous tower is your gateway to viewing the amazing two-mile long Stanford Linear Accelerator, the longest linear accelerator in the world. What atoms are they smashing today??

An altogether different experience is yours on our South Bay Scenery Tour. As the urban sprawl moves away from the business centers, the flat of the silicon valley gives way to the gently rolling Los Altos, Saratoga and Los Gatos hills. Enjoy the stunning landscaped acres and architecture of Filoli and Montalvo, the Tuscan style vineyards, the large Tudor styled estates, the horse arenas and barns and the numerous golf courses. Highway 17 snakes up into the Santa Cruz mountains above the delightful Los Gatos downtown and sparkling Lake Vasona. This is the life!