10 days to see what kind of adventure a trip around the Northwest could throw at us. We would begin our adventure with a visit to the Concrete WA Fly-In, and end it with the Orcas Island Fly-in a week later after visiting Idaho, Montana and Oregon. The Concrete Fly-In was great as usual arriving on Friday evening shortly before a T-storm arrived drenching us with heavy rain. The Seattle area weather was experiencing some very unusual weather with the forcast calling for record temps hitting 100 in a couple a days. Glad to be getting out of town. Spent one night in Concrete enjoying all the usual Fly-In bird watching and the we left for Orcas Island the next evening so we wouldnt get trapped by the expected valley fog the next morning for our departure to Idaho. Just got out of Concrete before another T-storm slammed us and we flew the 30 minutes it took us to get out to Orcas island to spend the night. Below is a photo of a little present the passing thunder storm left us with.[url][/url]
Waking up to a very damp morning with pockets of fog drifting about the San Juans, but the airport itself was clear for departure. Wheels off about 0600am to climb above a solid layer of low foggy cloud deck all the way east to the Cacades. We opened our flight plan and started climbing to clear the jagged North Cascades. As we passed over Concrete we could see that the airport was socked in good. The North Cascades were stunning. From the air I will put them up against any range in the world for their awesome beauty. We press on right into the teeth of the rising sun
. After a while the rolling hills of eastern WA began to appear and I felt a bit better as far as emergency options were concerned. A check of the fuel situation in the little town of Colville (neat place) and it wasn't to long before we were rounding the north end of Preist Lake to head south for a landing at Cavanaugh Bay to camp for a couple a days. The grass runway was in a little better shape than last year, as they had returfed it and smoothed out the bumps a bit. Alan was there as usual. Only one other plane there camping so we picked out a good spot and before too long were doing our best to rid our minds of the stresses of daily life. Sitting by the lake in our lawn chairs with our feet in the cool water sipping on a couple of Alaskan Ambers helped speed the process. Yea, thats about all we did for two days with a couple a swims thrown in and then it was time to pack up and launch for Kalispell, Montana to take a look see at Glacier Park. The small Kalispell City airport is the one to go to. There is a great little FBO there (Red Eagle FBO) where you can tie down and get fuel. They have a courtesy car for you if you need to run around town for a bit. We wanted a car for the entire day to go up into Glacier Park so we rented one. Got a room at the "Aero Inn" for 36 bucks. Yea, 36. Just say you are calling from the Red Eagle and you want a "commercial room". Just a little smaller, but all the same amenities as the larger rooms. After doing all the tourist junk up at the Park (getting in a line of cars to drive the "Road to the Sun") etc., we took off early the following morning to go back to Cavanaugh Bay (why not?) After another day and a night of stress therapy we planned our flight to the Oregon coast for a change of scenery. A gas stop in Deer Park (man they have one big airplane junk yard there! I didn't like looking at all those trashed planes as I made my down wind leg) and we were off for Hood River OR to assess things and unstick out butts from the seats.
Hood River. Man, its getting hot! (The Portland and Seattle area were in the middle if a record breaking heat wave and I wanted no part of it.) We wanted the ocean where we knew things would be cooler. A call to flight service confirmed that the entire coast of Oregon and WA were socked in with a marine layer. Ceilings were 7 to 900 underneath. Darn... Hey, wait a minute. I'm IFR rated. Very recent, but I am IFR rated. Yea, but I've never really used it. Been practicing under the hood with my buddy, but that was just practice. Hmmmm......lets seeee. Wife: "So, whats the deal. Did you call weather and find out?" "Uh, yea I did. They said the whole coast is socked in. VFR not recommended. We may have to do something different.
" "Arent you IFR rated? I want to go to the beach." "Well yea,.....we could do an approach into Astoria and then see how things look. The only thing is, I havent actually done this yet on my own. " "Well, when are you going to? C,mon, thats what you went through all that training for. Lets go" wife says. 6500 feet near Portland. "Portland app. This is Cessna ......849er, yada yada,...I'de like to get my clearance into Astoria." "Radar contact, climb to 8,000 and turn to 280". After getting squared away with ATC I felt like I was back in my element and realized that I knew how to do this, the training kicked in, and I felt actually quite at ease. The approach into Astoria ILS went like clockwork. We were only in the soup for a couple a minutes. It felt good to perform my first IFR approach in IMC without an instructor or safety pilot keeping watch, even though it was only IMC a short part of the way. We broke out about 900 feet and just made a low pass on the airport after cancelling and flew the short distance to the coastline before turning south to fly the 20-30 miles to get to Manzanita to see if it was in the clear. It was, we landed and set up our camp in one of the designated fly-in camp sites. What a nice place, except for the rather long walk into town. (Bring your bikes if you can). We strolled the beach on the bay right next to the airport, and then hiked the short hike to the main coast beach.
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The next morning we were able to get out and on top while maintaining VFR (barely) and flew VFR on top into Scapoose for some cheap gas. ($3.71). Leaving Scapoose we headed north for Orcas Island to be there for the Fly-In beginning that afternoon. VFR at Orcas and we landed and got another great tiedown spot to take in all the festivities. A great airport B-B-Q, some good brewskies and a bunch of BS later I nodded off to sleep in my tent thinking "somebody's got to do this, it may as well be me"
