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.

Some of the party goers during cocktails.

It was a very Happy Anniversary!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!