RV7 Flying Adventures

It was only five degrees outside this afternoon, but we decided to take a short flight to see Palouse Falls, frozen! We left at around 3:30 pm. It gave us enough time to fly to the falls and get back--barely--before the sun set. We were in the air for slightly over an hour. We wouldn't have wanted to fly for much longer than that. The airplane has a heater, but even so, it's not like sitting in your living room! Mike wore insulated overalls in addition to his jacket, hat and gloves. I stayed fairly warm in my coat, hat and gloves, although I noticed that by the time we were nearing home, my fingers felt quite icy and stiff.  In the picture above, we're circling around the falls, as we had approached it from the east.  Here, you can see that the amount of free-flowing water has dwindled to a narrow stream.  We're flying east again, and are on our way home. You can see the Snake River in the upper third of the picture if you look closely. The sun was setting on the hillsi

Hubby and I decided to take a Saturday afternoon flight. We had been talking about flying over the Painted Hills in central Oregon since last spring. We finally did it today. As the Painted Hills are over 200 miles from home, it took about 75 minutes to get there in the RV-7. It couldn't have been a prettier flight. The sky was clear and blue, and the air felt as smooth as glass. Aren't they incredible? The color striations are other-worldly. The Painted Hills themselves cover a very small area--hubby said about 3000 acres.  Same hills, but closer.   Here's a different hill, with different colors. We took a different route home. Hubby and I both needed a potty break, so we flew to Lexington, Oregon, and landed at the little airport there. Though little, it had a great pilot's lounge--it was warm and clean, and had tables and chairs and even a sofa. But that's not the subject of my picture. I loved seeing the tractor patterns on the hillsides whenever the farmer tur

Lake Roosevelt is a very large lake behind Grand Coulee Dam. The lake supplies water for the Spokane area, and is a  popular boating site. Seven Bays is a tiny little town on the lake, shown in the first picture below. There is a residential air park/private airstrip just above town, where it is unlawful to land unless invited to do so. A guy who hubby attended school with, now a retired Northwest Airlines pilot, has a summer home in Seven Bays. When hubby ran into Tom recently at a fly-in, we got the OK to land on the air strip. So we decided to take a Sunday afternoon flight ... In the picture above, we have made a 180 degree turn and are preparing to land. As is often the case, I don't see the runway, but hubby obviously does.  We have now landed and spent some time talking to several friendly people who live on the airstrip, and who came to check us out. They all know Tom, and showed us Tom's house, however Tom and his wife weren't there.  We are standing at the edge of

We decided to fly to the North Idaho resort town of Sandpoint, where we hadn't been in four years. Because the distance between the airport and the resort area is a two-mile walk, we decided to stash our fold-up mini bikes in the luggage compartment. Here we're flying over the beautiful little town of Sandpoint, that is a beach resort in summer, and a ski resort in winter. We have many happy memories of skiing at Schweitzer Mountain Ski resort, and eating pizza in Sandpoint afterwards for dinner. Here's a picture of a vacation home with a hangar below it, just off the Sandpoint Airport runway. The developers have many lots for sale, however only three lots have sold since we first became aware of it four years ago, and no homes other than the prototype have been built. We didn't check to see what the lots are selling for; no interest. But real estate in Sandpoint is pricey. We did see some home listings for anywhere from $275,000 (a shacky cabin) to $3.5 million.   Leav

The last time hubby and I took an afternoon flight to Joseph, Oregon was a little over a year ago. You can read my first Joseph post here. It was March 2012, and decidedly not yet tourist season for the tourist town. Yesterday, some friends accompanied us: Vince and Sharon Himsl. Sharon might be posting pictures on her blog , so if you're interested, check hers out in the next day or two. If you look closely off of the left side of our wingtip, you can see their airplane. Vince built a Vans RV-8, which is similar to our Vans RV-7, except that theirs is tandem seating (like a motorcycle), whereas ours is side-by-side. Here we are, just coming into the Enterprise/Joseph area, which abuts the Willowa mountain range. The mountains rise about 6,000 feet above a plateau that is already at a 4,000' elevation. We left in the heat of the afternoon, and so the air was very choppy with thermals. Sharon, her husband Vince, and my husband, Mike. As it happened, Joseph had a huge rodeo on S

When the weather was good enough to fly home on Tuesday, though it was cloudless in Montana, it was still only marginal in Canada. It was so hazy that visibility was limited, but enough, as long as the clouds didn't turn to fog and sock us in. That would've been big trouble. We flew only about 800 feet above ground level, which is a couple thousand feet lower than the altitude at which we normally fly.  It was also mildly turbulent, however as we crossed over into Montana, and the low clouds gave way to higher, cumulus clouds, the turbulence increased ten-fold. Or it felt like that much. I used to get sick regularly in our Maule, due to a variety of reasons, however I have never been sick in the RV-7 ... until Tuesday.  The big problem was that we couldn't land at just any nearby airport, assuming there were airports below us somewhere. We needed to go through U.S. Customs, and that can only happen at certain airports. We had to get back to Great Falls for that. And so ...