Last night was date night. We had a great flight down to Spanish Fork to checkout a favorite Mexican restaurant of our neighbors, La Casitas. Great food! My dad was in town for Tyler's birthday, so we had 5 adults + some misc gear put us about 100#s under gross weight. No problem. The plane flew great! Really loving the 205!

Cory, please elaborate on the Mexican food down there... I'm a fan already if its legit. Is there an airport car there to use? BTW the plane is in day 2 of pre-buy/annual. May be joining the 205 date night soon

A local fly-in about 50 miles away. Groups of heavily armed men in 4 wheel drives spoiled my first couple of eyeballed sites to hit on the way, luckily they seemed to all prefer bright orange clothing making them easy for me to avoid, and I finally found a new site that wasn't over run. After draining the sump I continued on to Clark's strip, where his wife amuses herself by mowing in various greeting thought the year on their grass strip. He is a spray pilot, farmer, tractor collector and a few other things I think, and does them all real well, once a year they put on a great noon feed...but you have to fly in to it, no problem usually but I had a crane job to get to, so I missed out mostly, though I did manage to get a small to go package to take along for the flight back!

Buddy Mike's new Altec 30 ton crane, a creampuff, not even greasy yet, flying the colors Some nice older iron, the J-3 that occupies the center was on display outside. He's not much to look at, but Errol Spaulding has put over 3500 hours on his '94 Rans S-7, not without a few adventures along the way, one epic one concerning a (not so) dry lake bed that took days to reach a conclusion. A great guy still having LOTS of flying fun.

Ohhh, so thats this fellow: http://www.backcountrypilot.org/communi ... ier%20lake

He had his 15 minutes here a while back. Glad to see his plane out flying..

Ha ha, good eye SixTwo Leemer! A picture is worth a thousand words indeed.

Errol can do no wrong in my eyes, after helping me out on a little misadventure I had about 15 years ago involving a sloppily landed one track dirt road landing and subsequent uncontrolled excursion into the boulder strewn brush field resulting in me getting to use, again, my lightning fast reflexes to shut down the engine before going up on the nose. He flew out and picked my sorry ass up and his son hauled the plane in an enclosed trailer. This was at 7500' outside of Bumf**k Idaho, no news reporters anyway!

Leaves are changing, but there was still some good stuff out there Saturday:

Keep them coming BRD!

A few of those pictures need to be on the homepage.

BRD,you the one sending the photos to Soucheray?
46tcrft

BRD....Just wow!

Yes, I send Joe area shots now and then (he now being a local...). Didn't hear him today, did he talk about it?

A 4 hr flight over, on, into, and all over the Copper Basin, about 85 miles from my place. Almost dead calm, and nice and cold.

I managed to find the abandoned mine I almost mountain biked into a few years back. It is a nightmarish scene and every bit as scary looking as I recall This area has them all over, all have no warning signs or anything, it's up to you to pay attention, it's not a OSHA approved theme park but the real thing. I was on the road up above, and come to a stop with my front wheel right on the funnel shaped edge with my left foot down on the incline, so came real close to skittering into the pit, and had a split second where I first realized the situation was deadly while at the same time was teetering right at the edge I still get a sick feeling in my gut thinking about it.....sliding into that pit, probably head first, somehow making it even scarier is that there is a wood ladder, what's left of it, visible, that disappears into the gloom. I would not climb down that ladder for a million dollars! But, there is something fascinating about looking into a hole in the ground while flying overhead, thus the term aerial spelunking. All this area is 8 to 9K, the surrounding peaks even higher, great country and super scenic.

Makes you wonder what you would find at the bottom of those holes??

M6RV6 wrote:Makes you wonder what you would find at the bottom of those holes??

I don't wonder

We have old mines like that here too, in the provice of Central Otago. They are really dangerous, most are unmarked and hidden in brush or long grass - most are over 100ft deep, some are more than 300ft deep - all deep enough that you're never coming out. No snakes mind you.

At the deepest of all, you can throw a rock in and count to 20 before the sounds get too quiet to hear....... it took 7 years to dig and the miners never found enough gold to make it pay.

Tonight was out and about the snow squalls...























same day, different camera:

BRD, yes Joe and Rookie where talking about the pictures and they where putting them up on their web site. You should invite them out for a ride, would be good GA pr.
46tcrft

BRD those are some wonderful photos. BTW that's a beautiful airstrip in the last photo of your 10/21 post-- is that where you base your airplane? Looks awesome!

That was 9Y2 (East Gull Lake) It services the resorts on the south end of the Gull lake chain. (as well as being the local driving range There are no hangars or fuel so it's just transients. (Friend of mine owns the land on both sides of it and is considering putting up a "shed" with a big door... Back when I lived on that end of the lake, I'd fly up from the Twin Cities and walk home from there.



But no, I base out of the main Crow Wing County Airport BRD - thus the moniker. We are blessed there with good people, good services and lots of grass alongside the concrete.

I flew over this island last year, and filed it away in the "gotta hit that someday" file. On the way back from a trip to the BackCountry Cub plant in Douglas Wyoming. Not as smooth as it looked from the air, but smooth enough

Nice pictures Tom, that looks like a fun spot.