South of Portland thru Columbia River Gorge to Walla Walla

AirBear plans his route...

After all the drama of getting the battery replaced and haggling over weather, we finally took off around 4 pm. I was still wondering whether I personally would have chosen to depart in that weather if it had been just me, but we gathered a lot of local intelligence on how people who live in this area fly through the Columbia River Gorge even when mountain tops are obscured by clouds...and the local advice turned out to be sound.

I admit that I flew today as flight photographer and provided some piloting backup to Bill Hughes, Pilot in Command of N15624, the Cherokee. After seeing today's collection of photos and being able to share them before dinner with the other pilots, I was perfectly glad about that. It seems odd to enjoy the flight more by looking at pictures of it than perhaps I did at the time...but it all goes by SOOO fast in the air. With the photos I can savour the images time and again. Bill was relaxed and great to fly with; he and I both like the Cherokee.

We flew a couple hundred miles, amidst some light rainshowers and some virga, the ceiling were scattered to broken and while it wasn't perfectly smooth air, it was pleasant flying and the scenery was splendid. Not the Grand Canyon, but a whole different kind of unforgettable.

After hours of botched batteries, belated breakfasts and battling banter about weather and who wanted to fly in what, the couple hours' flying itself managed to scrub out a lot of the tensions that the lead-up to the flight entailed.

NOW I could finally see why I took the time to do this.
NOW I could appreciate how lucky we are to be ABLE to do this, at any time, at any price.
My fellow pilots recounted more than a few conversations in airport lounges along the way as they chatted with career pilots driving skeds or hanging out waiting for charter passengers: each one of the pro's was green with envy. "You get to see a new airport and fly over new places EVERY DAY! We wake up in the morning and fly the same plane to the same places all the time."



Weather Thursday is supposed to be good...and, if we do get to Billings, Montana, we will have traversed some fairly rugged country. Take a look on Googlemaps at the stretch between WallaWalla Washington eastward via Missoula and Helena to Billings.