The trip started well, with a very uneventful commercial flight from Atlanta to Fairbanks. A good friend from work also had some time off and volunteered to copilot with me. We had a short layover in Seattle where we enjoyed the fine dining (and good beer!) available in the N terminal. We arrived in Fairbanks at 0200 Saturday morning and my local friends were so kind to pick us up and house us. After sleeping in and a huge breakfast of scrambled eggs, sweet rolls and coffee, we hopped in the plane to MOC my new ADI I had installed while the plane sat waiting for me. We took off from Chena Marina and departed to the west before turning south to reach Nenana in a roundabout way for some refresher pattern work. After sharing 10 patterns (my friend did really well for how long it had been since he flew a TD!), we mosied between rain showers over to the Wood River Buttes to see the B-25, then over to try and see Gold King which was in a cloud, then up to Blair Lakes. We did some low passes on the Blair Lakes strip but it was too wet for me to be comfortable landing, so we came back to Chena Marina.
Next stop was Hoodoo Brewery for some good beer, then an impromptu get together with some other local friends for some pizza.
Most of our route looks really good today, except for the last bit of Alaska. It looks like the shenanigans around Delta Junction, Tok, and Northway will clear up in a few hours, so we're going to keep sitting here and watching it. Maybe run to town a little to show my friend around Fairbanks. The original goal was Grande Prairie tonight. The new plan is Whitehorse tonight. Either way, we're ahead of schedule because the forecasts made it look like we wouldn't be able to leave Fairbanks until tomorrow.
