From the Seattle area we made the short hop to Hillsboro, OR to visit family. The first 2 days it rained like stink, then the mountains came out to play. Here's a shot of Mt Hood from the runway at HIO:
We left HIO on a clear and sunny day for a flight to the coast to visit more family. Unfortunately, clouds and fog were pushed up against the coast range and we had to zig and zag to get in to Newport:
Our stay at the coast was a delight, but fog threatened to keep us there forever. We hung around the Newport airport all morning waiting for a break, but it did come. Our next stop was Santa Rosa, CA with some delightful and smooth time over the beaches and coastal mountains before arriving.
While in Santa Rosa, an old friend joined us for a trip into the redwoods. Those trees are magnificent, with the tallest ones being almost 350' above ground!
From Santa Rosa, we flew over San Francisco Bay, hoping to see some of the America's cup boats out sailing, but no joy. Angel Island and the golden gate bridge were visible and impressive though.
We spent the next night in Visalia, CA but got there too late to get a rental car. Another Maule owner on the field spotted our bird and came over to chat. When we told him we were going to fly back up to Fresno so we could get a rental car he offered to drive us into town for the night. Bryan is a great guy and helped turn disappointment into a really good evening. There were lots of cool planes at this airport like this red Cessna that came in just as we were leaving.
The California desert through Techachapi pass can be pretty dull, but there are some interesting sights. Some of the locals do what they can to keep from losing their population. It looks like the town of Hillendale offers every resident a home on the waterfront as incentive to stay:
From California, we hit Prescott, AZ where there was a big forest fire burning on the hill adjacent to town. They had the big DC-10 tankers dropping boarate solution on the fire along with a host of other, smaller aircraft.
We topped off the tanks and visted another old friend while in Prescott then pushed on. Here is Sedona from the air. It is impressive no matter what angle you see the town from.
After Sedona, we crossed more boring desert, then flew over the extinct Volcanoes outside of Grants, NM and the lava flows that are recent enough in geologic time they have not broken down from hard, sharp rock into soil.
The next spectacular site was Sky City - the pueblo of Acoma. The pueblo sits on top of the rock outcrop in the middle of the picture. You can see the spires of the Catholic church the Spanish built there in the early 1600's. The pueblo may be the oldest, continually inhabited community in the continental US.
Our next stop was Santa Fe and the fantastic sunset over the Rio Grande. That is a gorgeous part of the country and we wish we could have stayed longer, but I was running out of vacation time and we still had a long way to go. Besides, dawdling in the high desert can get you into real trouble with density altitude, so we pushed on early the next morning.
We didn't push on very far though. Thunderstorms blocked our path to Oklahoma, so we detoured to the north in hopes of going over the top of the buggers.
We made it to North Platte, NE, but conditions there weren't perfect. Smoke from forest fires in Colorado turned the sky there red. At least we had the ceiling and visibility to continue.
Our next planned stop was Lafayette, Indiana, but thunderstorms blocked our way again. We wound up in Muncie, IN after dodging big dark monsters all day. We were actually 20 miles out of Lafayette, and the ATIS said the wind was 170 @ 6 knots. By the time we started our approach, the storm was over running the field and the wind was from 340 degree at 25 knots, gusting to 37. We bailed and ran away from the storm.
From Muncie it was all good. We made the last 390 miles in good time with no worries. Now I'm looking forward to exploring the capabilities of this plane and my own comfort zone with smaller and rougher airports. I'll be based at a grass strip in West Virginia by next weekend and I'll be exploring the places I can reach on weekends in the Mid-Atlantic region. Any suggestions?
