My parents friends, Shell and his wife Gerry, were visiting so I volunteered to take them for a ride and asked my Uncle Don if he wanted to go. So I met them at Hood Strip and we each took a passenger. I took Hanna with me and left her to visit with my parents while we flew.
It was about 3.5 hours in the air and we had a great trip. Gerry flew my plane quite a bit and did really well - power on and off stalls, climbs, "landing" at an abitrary altitude... I don't want to be an instructor, but it was pretty fun.
I first took Shell over the Beluga power plant and gas field (where I helped install and start a turbocompressor a few years ago) and then up the Beluga River. I was looking for Olson Creek, but missed it - it's farther down the Beluga River than I remembered.Then we landed on the West end of Beluga Lake. It's a real pretty spot I usually visit each year. The beach is nice (rocky), nice views, easy landing and it looks like the trees have been thinned so it's like a park. We walked around a bit and my Uncles friend stopped by in a taildragger C-150 who turned out to be the son of a guy I worked with in the late 80's :-)
Then we flew up to the Triumvirate Glacier - only about 5 minutes away. More nice views and a glacial morraine to climb on. The wind always blows down glacier so I worry about the takeoff into the mountain, but there's always plenty of room to turn.
We switched passengers here so this is me taking off with Gerry.
On the way home, we flew over Little Mt Susitna unsucessfully searching for bears. Then I told my Uncle I was going to fly Gerry over the F-101 Voodoo wreckage near figure 8 lake and he said "Let's go land by the P-51 tail" which I had never seen so we landed on the mudflats near it. It had turned colder and windy by then.
Then back to drop off Gerry and pick up Hanna at the strip and home to Palmer.... A good day in June.
Posts
