A Journal, with Pictures

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!

Good weather, a great line up that included the Navy Blue Angles meant atten­dance of close to 80,000 peo­ple for this years Day­ton Air Show.

The show opened with Team Fas­trax with a large flag drop, then a Wright “B” Flyer fly over, the Keven Cole­man (19 years old) aer­o­bat­ics.

A lit­tle bit of his­tory on the 75 anniver­sary of the DC-3, the incred­i­ble P-51 and then the Navy F-18 Super Hor­net Demo team squished vapor out of the air.

The AeroShell pre­ci­sion team per­formed and there was a large col­lec­tion of air­craft sta­tic dis­plays that inter­ested the crowd and pro­vided shade.

The gen­eral admis­sion crowds were big and the chalets were all sold out. Sean Tucker flew the new 400 Horse­power Chal­lenger III.

The F-16 Demo Team per­formed, two WWII B-17 flew and what would a air­show be with­out a wing walker.

Fat Albert the Blue Angle C-130 per­formed then the Blue’s them­selves put on a great exhi­bi­tion of pre­ci­sion fly­ing. In addi­tion to the acts pic­tured there was Kyle Franklin Waco Aer­o­bat­ics, AD-5 Skyraider fly­over, Greg Poe’s MX2 Aer­o­bat­ics, the Air Force C-17 Globe­mas­ter III demon­stra­tion, and a jet pow­ered bus. The show ran non-stop from 11:00 AM until 4:30 PM.

Joyce and I flew from Hilton Head, SC to Fort Pierce. Fl and refu­eled then on to North Eleuthera. We then took the ferry to the Rock House hotel on Har­bor island, which turned out to be a great place to stay, with a great din­ing room and view of the inner har­bor.

We explored Har­bor Island by golf cart, pink sand beaches, inter­est­ing typ­i­cal Caribbean habi­tat, good food, and a laid back atmos­phere that fit per­fectly.

Har­bor Town, was fun to see, with typ­i­cal Caribbean houses, a conch warf and the great clear water sur­round­ing us.

We enjoyed Har­bor town, saw the sites and the pink sand and all the local atmos­phere. We would return.

It was now time to fly to Stella Maria, which is due south.

Cape Santa Maria, turned out to be a excel­lent resort des­ti­na­tion, with a spec­tac­u­lar beach. We then rented a car a explored the island head­ing south to the blue hole. I dived on the blue hole off of Belize and I should have known, if you have seen one blue hole you have seen them all, but it was an inter­est­ing drive.

The high­light of the drive was Max’s Conch shop, just north of the Blue Hole. Max pre­pared conch salad, and we had a bot­tle of the local beer and life was good.

We then hung out on the per­fect beach enjoyed the food and Cape Santa Maria and met some nice peo­ple, before fly­ing back on Sat­ur­day May 8th to Fort Laud­erdale to spend a day with Jen­nifer, Mike and Alexan­dra.

On our way over the Exu­mas we made a note to visit George Town on our next trip. The Bahamas, are beau­ti­ful and we will return.

Grand Ma brought a fin­ger nail paint­ing kit, and that was a hit with Alexan­dra.

Alexan­dra showed us all her cos­tumes from her recent visit to Dis­ney World, which was impres­sive, par­tic­u­larly the wigs. We had a great time with Mike and Jen­nifer and Alexan­dra, din­ner at one of our favorite Fort Laud­erdale restau­rants and then on Sun­day flew back to Hilton Head, a good week.

Jen, Mike and Alexan­dra spent a week with friends at the cot­tage at the end of June. They vis­ited the Prado’s in Savan­nah and the beach. Then the rest of the fam­ily, absent Gil who was fly­ing to Alaska, joined them for the fourth of July. The Prado’s, Gary, Heidi, Brenn, Caitlin and Kin­sey along with Joyce as well as the Montgomery’s went to Spring Island for the parade and enjoyed the sports facil­ity and play ground.

The fam­ily enjoyed the fourth of July cook out at Spring Island then fire­works and sparklers at the cot­tage.

Heidi, Gary, Brenn, Caitlin and Kin­sey came to Hilton Head for Easter Sun­day. The Montgomery’s spent Easter in Evans­ville.

The Prado Fam­ily poses for a pic­ture before head­ing to Long Cove Club for brunch.

Kin­sey and Brenn all dressed up for Easter.

Caitlin has some candy before the big buf­fet at the club.

Caitlin plays some golf before brunch.

Brenn has a big brunch then goes after the Easter eggs. It’s a fine spring day and every­one has a Happy Easter.