...besides the scenery, climate, and people, is the fact that I live directly under the traffic pattern for McChord AFB in Tacoma, Washington. As such, I get to see all manner of airplanes circling overhead- McChord is normally a C-17 base, so I usually see at least 10 of those on any given day, but there are also some others. I try to keep my camera nearby at all times, just in case, especially since I've missed out on some awesome stuff, like:

-a pair of C-130s flying extremely tight formation, and extremely low
-Several V-22 Ospreys, also extremely low
-Waking up to a trio of A-10s (you have no idea how much I regret grabbing my camera before I ran outside...)
-A C-5
-one of the two 747s used as Air Force One (though it was not Air Force One at the time; it was just visiting for maintenance...)
-two (what appeared to be) An-124s
-The occasional KC-135
-very rarely, an F-16, or F-18 or two (though I mostly just HEAR the F-18s O.o)

However, I've managed to snag a few shots of some cool stuff, too:

C-17s:



My favorite (other than the A-10s), the F-15:





Another common sight is P-3 Orions- I assume they're typically based at NAS Whidbey, but they seem to come down and do touch-and-gos here fairly often:
This one was painted in a 1950s P2V Neptune scheme for the Centennial of Naval Aviation last year- I'd seen it several times before, but had never gotten a picture of it until last night- it was circling around for almost two hours!




This "normal" P-3 has been going for about as long this morning- I snapped these about a half hour ago:
The view from my usual spotting platform- the roof!




This one's heavily zoomed and cropped, and my camera failed to focus, but I believe it was an A-4, painted in an "Aggressor" scheme:


An L-39- seeing this was the impetus for me to actually download the L-39 mod and do some skins!


We also get the occasional UH-60 and OH-58


A T-33- I believe this one's civilian-owned, because it has a N- registration number:


Apologies for the low quality of some of the photos- my camera's pretty old, and only has a 3x optical zoom, so most of the photos have been heavily cropped. The exceptions are the C-17s and the T-33; I happened to be borrowing my girlfriend's Nikon D3100 that day, and she's got a 200mm lens. There's been a lot of joking about me "borrowing" it, and never returning it! ;P

Also, McChord had its annual airshow this summer, and I was SO excited to be able to go. However, my family ended up being in Michigan visiting family at the time, so I had to settle for seeing all of my friends' facebook posts, which were mostly about being annoyed by the noise. Some people... haha. Next year, I'll be there for sure!

Anywho, hope you like the photos, and I'd be very interested to see any you all might have taken!