RV7 Flying Adventures

Several weekends ago, hubbie and I flew north to St. Maries, Idaho for an EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Pancake Breakfast Fly-in. This is the runway, straight ahead of the prop. It was a very good breakfast, and very well attended, including this  1928 Boeing 40c , which was Boeing's first passenger aircraft. Interesting, that the pilot sat in an open cockpit, whereas his passengers sat where you see the small rectangular windows in the center of the fuselage. The biplane looked to carry about six or so passengers. This particular plane has a very interesting history; read link if you're intrigued. That's our good friends standing in front of it. They flew their R-V 8 to the fly-in.   There were plenty of other interesting airplanes to look at. Many pilots have restored old airplanes in the same way that car enthusiasts restore antique cars. I particularly liked this green airplane painted with a silver Pegasus. Metallic paint jobs are very popular, however this p...

Hubbie and I finally had some time yesterday to break away for awhile. The builders are still putting new siding on our house. I'm not quite retired yet, but getting very, very close. (It's something I cannot yet wrap my head around.) Next weekend, hubbie will be busy preparing for harvest. I'll be babysitting three grandkids for three days, and so we decided it was now or never. Well, now or not again until September, when we hope to fly to Utah over Labor Day weekend. ; ) So yesterday, we hopped in the RV-7 and flew 200 miles to McCall, Idaho, which is one of four exciting resort towns that we've discovered within a 200-mile radius of the Palouse where we live. We're sure there are many similar towns in beautiful WA, OR, MT and ID, that other people have discovered, just not us, not yet. We left at 11:00 am and got there around noon. The flight was serene, entirely uneventful. It felt like we were driving along in a car, only at 10,300 feet, over mountains. We ha...

Hubby and I took our first flying adventure of 2012 on Saturday. We decided to fly to Joseph, Oregon, a tiny, touristy town in Wallowa County, in the Northeast corner of Oregon. Spring is beginning to make a show in our area, and so the ag planes were out in full force. We made our getaway in between three ag planes (the yellow one) that were buzzing the field. (They were coming in to refuel and reload their planes with dry fertilizer.)  In a 200 mph airplane, it took us 30-40 minutes to get to Joseph, which is nestled at the foothills of the towering Willowa mountain range. Still plenty of snow on the Willowas. This is Willowa Lake. About 10 years ago, we flew into Joseph with our mountain bikes in the back of our other plane (which we sold in 2004), a Maule M-7. We then pedaled from the airport to the tip of the lake where there is a lodge, campgrounds and deer that are so tame, you can pet them! It was an ambitious bicycle ride. Our current airplane is big enough to hold only co...

Hubbie and I are now home from our Hawaiian vacation. We spent a week in KAUAI, which must certainly be Paradise on Earth . It rained only once while we were there, although the center of the island gets the most annual rainfall of anywhere on earth. We were on-the-go nonstop, either by foot, car, catamaran, or in Kevin's open cockpit biplane. In one hours' time, we got an aerial view of the entire island. Part of the island, the Na Pali coastline, is so rugged that there are no roads and the only way to see it is either by air or by boat. We took advantage of both. Our Catamaran left from Port Allen along the southern coast and then sailed on up to Na Pali. The ocean swells were so rugged that day that at least one of the other charter companies canceled their tours. For us, being drenched by waves just made it all the more fun. Until one particularly heavy-duty wave almost washed a three passengers overboard. I'm not kidding. At that point, the captain decided it was too...

Late afternoon in early December Palouse area of SE Washington, USA  Landmark: Steptoe Butte

A couple of weekends ago, we flew the RV-7 to Whitefish, Montana. In the top picture, the nose of our airplane is looking straight down the grass runway. Whitefish Lake is on the outskirts of town, and probably 3-4 miles from the airport. If you look closely at the mountain, you will see a bunch of ski runs coming down it. That is Big Mountain Ski Resort. In the summer, you can hike on several hundred miles' worth of trails around the mountain. In order to get to town from the airport, we pulled our mini-bikes out of the back of the airplane. But there is also a shed at the edge of the airport that is filled with bikes, free for use by pilots. It was a lot of fun to ride our bikes through the quiet little town where the limbs of apple trees, laden with ripe yellow apples, and one of the most wonderful scents known to man, spilled over the sidewalks. Whitefish is a very small town with a definite Montana, frontier-like quality to it. It reminded me of Bend, Orego...