A Journal, with Pictures

The week­end cel­e­bra­tion started Thurs­day with the arrival of Heidi, Gary, Caitlin, Kin­sey, and Brenn oth­er­wise known as “the cir­cus”. Gil’s brother Mike and Sis­ter Patty arrived in the after­noon from the west coast. Jen­nifer, Mike and Alexan­dra arrived Thurs­day evening.

It was Caitlins and Kin­seys first time in Day­ton.

Fri­day was a busy day with the kids all in the pool, then a belated birth­day party for the twins and in the evening a out­door pic­nic din­ner for our out of town guests and fam­ily.

Birth­day Cake!

Fri­days pic­nic din­ner wel­comed out of town guests for the week end includ­ing Bruce Edwards (Best Man at our Wed­ding) from Cal­i­for­nia, his wife Diane flew in Sat­ur­day. In addi­tion the Fleets, Whites, Gor­don Faulkner and his girl friend Mar­i­lyn from Hilton Head, and Peter and Sherry John from Chicago/Hilton.

The weather was per­fect by the pool and no one left hun­gry or thirsty. It was a great way to start the week­end with friends and fam­ily.

The day of our anniver­sary started with some play­ing golf at Moraine Coun­try Club includ­ing Peter John, Gor­don Faulkner, Larry Hayes, Rich Miller, Elton White, Joe Stephan, Dan Enneck­ing and Gil. Mike, Gary, Rex Fleet and Bruce Edwards vis­ited the Air Force Museum. The ladies did some sight see­ing. The fam­ily got together before the party for fam­ily pic­tures and then it was off to the party. Cock­tails on the ter­race, din­ner, danc­ing with a toast by Heidi and Jen­nifer. It was a great evening and every­one appeared to enjoy them­selves.

Some of the party goers dur­ing cock­tails.

It was a very Happy Anniver­sary!

Sun­day morn­ing August 29th. we served Sun­day brunch for the out of town guests with later flights and a few NCR Alumni in town. Join­ing us were the Fleets, Stephans, Whites, Ennek­ings, James, Pools, John Frazer and Sharon from Cal­i­for­nia, the Bishs from Cleve­land, Joyces Brother Ray and his girl friend Sue, Gils brother Mike and sis­ter Patty as well as the Prado and Mont­gomery fam­ily. It was a beau­ti­ful day, per­fect to be out­doors and enjoy a Bloody Mary or Mimosa.

After the guests departed the fam­ily enjoyed time in and around the pool and a cook out din­ner.

The Montgomery’s departed for Fort laud­erdale Sun­day after­noon. The Prado’s left for Savan­nah Mon­day and Mike, Patty, Ray and Sue returned to the west coast on Tues­day. It was a great cel­e­bra­tion with per­fect weather to be with fam­ily and friends.

June 27, 28 and 29

Bill McN­abb, a pilot friend of mine, and I have been plan­ning a fly­ing trip across the United States. We would then go up the west coast of Alaska, visit Ketchikan, Seward and Denali, then through the Yukon Ter­ri­tory, across British Colum­bia, then back from Mon­tana to Day­ton, Ohio our start­ing point.

On our day of depar­ture a huge ugly storm sys­tem across the upper Mid­west caused us to re-plan our first day and fly south to Chanute, Kansas to refuel. We then flew to our ini­tial des­ti­na­tion Laramie, Wyoming. We skirt the storm the whole way and buck head­winds and arrive in Laramie after a long day. We over night and leave the next morn­ing first stop Boise, Idaho. We get a great view of the con­ti­nen­tal divide with the Tetons in the dis­tance.

It’s very hot in Boise, Idaho and after refu­el­ing and lunch we are off to Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton. We encounter clouds and tur­bu­lence as we fly over the Cas­cade range, but make a visual approach into our des­ti­na­tion for the day.

Our plan is to fly to Ketchikan, Alaska tomor­row, but mother nature has other ideas. When we get up, low icing lev­els over our route cause us to start look­ing at an alter­na­tive plan. After giv­ing up on plan”A”, we start plan­ning another route up the east side of the Alaska Range. We lose a day, but we think we can rejoin our orig­i­nal itin­er­ary in Alaska. We go to bed think­ing that we will skip Ketchikan and go to White­horse in the Yukon tomor­row, then on to Anchor­age the next day.

June 30, July 1

We get up early and dis­cover that the weather has changed again and our orig­i­nal plan looks fea­si­ble, so we scrap plan “B” and head for Ketchikan. We climb out over beau­ti­ful Van­cou­ver Island and the waters of British Colum­bia, but soon are above the clouds. Not much flight see­ing, but we are on our way to Alaska. The clouds came up to meet us, and we started pick­ing up ice so we climb higher. When we near Ketchikan, we pre­pare for an instru­ment approach but see a hole in the clouds and dive through. This turns out to have a good result, but in ret­ro­spect, we should have done the approach because of the high ter­rain and tons of sea plane traf­fic. We tie down at a very inter­est­ing air­port, take the ferry across the chan­nel and check into the hotel. We rent a car and drive to an area where bears can be seen fish­ing for salmon. We see lots of salmon and eagles, but no bears. We then visit the old area of town that once was the red light dis­trict, then off to a totem park.

The next morn­ing, we fly to Yaku­tat avoid­ing the ice and then again fly­ing above the clouds. No flight see­ing. We make a instru­ment approach into Yaku­tat in a light driz­zle. Yaku­tat is a fish­ing lodge, with self ser­vice fuel on a big air­port, which was most likely built in WWII. The lodge is rus­tic but the food is good, so we fuel up and are on our way to Seward. We find that Anchor­age radar can’t let us down to get into Seward, so we head for our alter­nate, Anchor­age Inter­na­tional. We fly on top of clouds and soon start to see big moun­tains ris­ing above the cloud level. We land, rent a car and enjoy the drive to Seward along a very scenic high­way.

We check into our motel, a real dump, but with the hol­i­day week­end the best avail­able and get ready to explore Seward tomor­row.

July 2,3 and 4

We get up Fri­day and guess what, it’s rain­ing in Alaska. We make reser­va­tions on boats, Bill a fish­ing boat and I on a tour boat. I drop Bill off for his early char­ter, and then after break­fast do some sight see­ing in Seward. I visit the Alaska Sea Life Cen­ter, then tour town, which has a lot going on, go by the air­port to recon­firm that dri­ving in was a great idea. I then board my tour boat and enjoy the after­noon view­ing glac­i­ers, and wild life in Res­ur­rec­tion Bay. Seward is located a the end of a fjord, with a large har­bor for fish­ing, tour boats as well as cruise ship dock­ing.

Bill caught his limit of hal­ibut. I saw ice bergs being made, artic puffin’s and a lot of other wild life. Hal­ibut din­ner and tomor­row we will drive to Tal­keetna and hope­fully see Denali.

On Sat­ur­day we drive to Tal­keetna. We decide not to fly because of weather and we will need the car any­way. We check into Tal­keetna Lodge, the nicest place we have stayed so far. We then visit the town of Tal­keetna, which is quaint and basi­cally tourist shops.

The next morn­ing, we get up very early and drive to Denali Park entrance. Unfor­tu­nately, it is cloudy and rain­ing so our sight see­ing is lim­ited. Denali Park is the size of New Hamp­shire and has lim­ited roads. Bill catches a bus tour and I do some dri­ving and take in the many dis­plays, exhibits as well as ranger pre­sen­ta­tions and a great movie. I have lunch when the sun finally comes out in Alaska at a view­ing site and right behind those clouds is Denali, I’m told. Bill gets a pic­ture of some bears and moose then we drive back to Tal­keetna.

The next morn­ing, we do get a suprise as we are get­ting ready to leave. The clouds part, and we get to see Denali, which two thirds of the peo­ple who visit the park never do.

July 5 and 6

We get up early, and drive to Anchor­age from Tal­keetna, get­ting a weather update and file our flight plan as we drive. The weather looks O.K., and we are hope­ful that we will get to see the Alaskan Range on our way to White­horse in the Yukon. We are not dis­ap­pointed as we have spec­tac­u­lar views of moun­tains, tun­dra, glac­i­ers, rivers and lakes as far as you can see.

We land in White­horse and rent a car. The next day we expe­ri­ence one of the high­lights of our trip when we visit the Yukon Game Pre­serve. This pre­serve pro­vides tours guided by expert nat­u­ral­ist that per­mit you to see most of the wild ani­mals of the Yukon. We see and pho­to­graph elk, cari­bou, wood bison, moun­tain goats, moun­tain sheep, lynx, musk ox, moose, arc­tic fox. It’s a great expe­ri­ence and we learn a lot to boot.

After lunch, we visit the S.S. Klondike, a shal­low bot­tom stern wheel boat that was raised, restored and sits on the bank of the Yukon river. This gives us a glimpse into the excit­ing time when White­horse was the trans­porta­tion hub for the gold fields cen­tered up river in Daw­son. We then visit the McBride Yukon His­tory museum and call it a day. We enjoy White­horse, par­tic­u­larly the bet­ter weather and start plan­ning for our flight through Smithers on to Golden tomor­row.

July 7 and 8, 2010

Our last sight see­ing stop is Golden in British Colum­bia. We Fly from White­horse in the Yukon with a stop in Smithers for lunch and fuel then on to our des­ti­na­tion. Leav­ing White­horse, we are soon in “uncon­trolled air­space” basi­cally out of radar con­tact, and it is des­o­late but beau­ti­ful coun­try below. We make radio con­tact with Van­cou­ver Cen­ter and land in Smithers, a beau­ti­ful Alpine town. We cross the cen­tral val­ley of B.C. and then reach the Cana­dian Rock­ies. Golden is in a canyon, and as we clear the last ridge, we see the air­port eighty five hun­dred feet below in the val­ley. The next day we rent a car and travel up the Trans-Canadian High­way to the Lake Louise area. We see Emer­ald Lake, Kakakkaw Falls, which are the high­est in Canada, Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and a lot of beau­ti­ful Moun­tain scenery.

We have a great din­ner in Golden at the Kick­ing Horse Grill and then start prepar­ing for our return trip that starts tomor­row.

July 9 and 10

We fly out of Golden and head to Kalispell to clear cus­toms. We refuel, grab lunch-to-go and are off for Pierre, SD where we will spend the night. We fly over our last range of moun­tains east of Kalispell and then over the rugged bad lands, then ranch coun­try, and finally farms. Pierre turns out to be a very clean and neat state cap­i­tal city and a good place to lay over. The next morn­ing we are in the air by seven forty five. We have to dodge south of some thun­der­storms to Moline for a quick refuel. We are in the air in thirty min­utes and on our last leg. With about a hour and a half to go, we get a alter­na­tor fail­ure light and go through the emer­gency pro­ce­dure and shut down that part of the sys­tem, and con­tinue home. We land unevent­fully and fin­ish a great trip with just a lit­tle excite­ment to remind us that it has been a great adven­ture. In total we have flown forty six point seven hours and trav­eled six thou­sand four hun­dred miles.

It turned out to be the adven­ture we had hoped for, maybe even a lit­tle more.

We did it!