Jake and Hanna's First Fish

Caught at my parents cabin (as was Jake's first fish shown mounted on my office wall).


It's a sure thing with worms so I don't fish that way, but it's good for the kids because they're 'catching' and not just 'fishing'.

Hanna lost a couple, landed this one and put down her rod in order to focus on counseling Jake. She became an instant expert - advising Jake on all aspects of fishing or that he should check his worm because he 'missed a bite'.


I had a hard time talking her into releasing it so we had to let it swim around in a bucket for a while - first she said wanted to eat it, then she said she wanted Grammie to eat it.

Valdez TO and Landing Competition

Jake and I chose the Valdez short takeoff and landing competition over the Kenai Air Fair this year. I had never before landed in Valdez which I can’t believe. I called flight service to see if there was some sort of post 9/11 flight restriction about flying near the Valdez oil terminal (terminus of the Alaska pipeline) and they didn’t know, other than the general nationwide powerplant/dam/stadium avoidance warning. The briefer consulted a Supervisor and then said “You’d think there would be something specific but we can’t find one so don’t loiter over it”. So I flew right over it because it was the only thing I recognized to report my position with and there was a LOT of traffic.

We had a great day and ran into a bunch of people we knew. It was sunny and beautiful – we even got sunburned! I’d like to spend the night next year, but the Valdez weather is always so unpredictable...

The route, about an hour each way.



Over the top of Knik Glacier into Prince William Sound.


It looked like Ultima Thule brought everyone they knew in this thing, including a few drums of fuel? (They drained the fuel from their competition planes into the drums.)


A gorgeous Goose. leather club seating and a very modern panel. I thought it was Jimmy (or maybe Warren?) Buffett’s but it's registered to an AK corporation. The ex-Governors Westwind Jet was there also and it’s a beauty too.


We talked to Kirk Ellis while he was emptying the Hulk for the competition. I'd never seen this up close - being made from a Supercub, apparently it is registered as a PA-18 with mods. The strangest thing is that they added the two front seats and kept the single stick so the pilot flies it with a right hand "side stick".



The wind was very light and the Supercubs generally took off in less than 100 feet and the 180's were under 200. The following are the 2 shortest TO's we saw. Both were 'exhibition' aircraft and were not part of the competition.

The first one was some sort of Cub that sounded like it had a real big engine. I think the announcer mentioned some connection to “Big Rocks and Long Props” that I couldn’t quite make out. The first time he took off, he yawed real bad like he couldn't keep the engine torque under control.


The second one looked a modified cub with a purpose built wing for short takeoffs with a wild leading edge and got off in 46 feet if I remember correctly. The guy in the photos is crouched by the 50 ft cone.


Thanks to Jake for taking all the photos! Dave

Baja 2008

We decided to go to Baja on the spur of the moment. Our dual mission was to check out the Baja Bush Pilots and see if the area was suitable as a snowbird/retirement destination. We incidentally had a little fun too!

We had tried to make some advance reservations but weren't able to get much information or many contacts from the internet so, on the basis of an email from Javier, owner of Las Casitas in Mulege, that said "we don't have those dates, but my cousin has a clean hotel and we can work something out" we took off. We flew into Loreto on the East coast of Baja, took a cab to the bus station and 2 hours later Julie was not feeling too hot from the motion but all of us were in the oasis town of Mulege, pop. 3300 or so.

After some confusion getting my cell phone to work in Mexico, we got a cab over to Las Casitas where the girl at the desk said… 'No es possible, no room". When we mentioned Javier, I saw that unmistakable look - "The freaking boss made some deal with these gringos and now I have to clean up the mess". But Javier showed up and all was well. It was pretty nice… only 8 rooms and only 40 bucks a night.

Everyone was super friendly and Hanna was our advance ambassador – telling everyone she saw "Hola!" and then "Gracias, Adios!". We met a local Navy Doctor on the beach that was a real nice guy and asked me 'why her face is from a different world?'. He understood 'Adopte, Cheeena'.

The town is real pretty, full of palms and near some awesome beaches (the Bay of Conception). There isn't much in the way of tourist development.

Now, I guess we learned something about little Mexican towns; They are not quiet. We were just a block away from the main plaza. For a few days before "Disco Mejore", they had to drive the loudspeaker car around town late into the night advertising it. Then they rolled the trucks with the sound gear into town and it was Disco Mejore all night. The 'club in a tent' one street over must have borrowed the Rolling Stones touring sound system to blast all night on the weekends. The fire department was right across the street and Stockton, CA had obviously tuned up the siren when they donated the truck to the 'Bombaderos'. Then of course there was the boxing match. All this interspersed with 3AM attack dogs in the courtyard behind us, the 6AM rooster, a maid that felt compelled to enter our room precisely at 8AM in the morning and yell "Aiiiie, Perdon!"… and some mysterious church bells. So… when Easter came around we were rolling into town and enthusiastically telling our cab driver how much we were anticipating a good nights sleep… when he sheepishly pointed out a new poster – the cockfights. Yep, the traditional Easter night cockfights. Or as I like to call them 'slash a chicken for Jesus'. So we started sleeping in the afternoon – like all the locals.

At the river mouth we talked to some fishermen that use these rusty air compressors to feed a scuba mask and dive for bottom fish which they net. Most of the fish we had was muddy and mushy – like bad catfish. But you find somewhere with a good fish taco, and yeehaa!

The town had a very cool cemetery…

The Baja Bush Pilots showed up (at least 40 planes) at the local 4000 ft dirt airport, so we went up to the hotel there for dinner (Serenidad - nicer hotel than ours, a frigid pool, food we liked more but twice the cost), met some of the BBP's, had roasted pig and a Mariachi band. Many of them had the traditional twin engine, retractable, turbine powered 'bush' aircraft (inside Alaskan joke), but there were a few taildraggers, too. In fairness, they are a very well organized group that provides a lot of support for pilots flying Mexico and S. America, in areas just as inhospitable and remote as Alaska. They seemed like largely good guys and a good resource. They use GPS tracking devices and will post their flight plans on the website and the tracking devices allow anyone with web access to see the aircraft position every 10 minutes. Sounds like good idea to me.

We hired a local guide to take us out in the desert and give us a little botanical demonstration of medicinal uses for local plants and how to find water in cacti… it was a lot of fun. The buzzards were circling the entire time and Jake said "I hope they don't know something we don't" but we all made it back alive. Salvador then took us up to some 7000 ? year old cave paintings that was a little hike and real fun, too.

Hanna decided to hold Salvador's hand most of the way back…

We wanted to go up North and see the Gray whales in their calving grounds. From the Baja Bush Pilots website, we thought that it was 20 minutes from Mulege. Which is true… IF you have your own plane. For us… 2 hours in a taxi, spend the night at San Ignacio, 2 hours in a truck (the last half or so on very rough single lane), and then reverse to get back.

On the road to San Ignacio…

San Ignacio is a real pretty and very small town. We found a decent hotel (Quiet!!) and went down to the plaza to hook up with the whale tour people.

No problem… we had great luck the entire way just winging it.

It was a tiny town and the plaza was the traditional square and real pretty – softly lit at night with a bunch of people (mostly kids) hanging out. We found a decent restaurant on the plaza and all was well.

So finally, the next day… WHALES!! 40-50 foot whales…. Whales as far as you could see.

We had been told that the whales wanted you to touch them. I found this hard to believe and felt a little uneasy about hassling them in their calving grounds, but we found the most incredible thing…

We didn't chase them, trap them or entice them in any way … and they came right up to the boat. On their own. In fact 2 or 3 cows (I'm not sure how many were different) PUSHED their calves up to the boat. One of the cows seemed to target Hanna and pushed the calf up several times until Hanna touched it. I'm not sure what was in it for the whales – maybe teach the kids that they didn't have anything to fear from humans? They weren't rubbing on the boat. It seemed more than curiosity – like they wanted to interact. Maybe they're sentient enough to know they're doing PR work for the species… I don't know but it blew my mind.

I had a scruffy, overweight, middle aged guy stand in for me in the family photo…

We made the long trip back to Mulege and hung out for a few more days. The kids got frighteningly sick so we took them to a very ill-equipped but clean hospital with a very nice doctor and they got better pretty fast. We had to spend a couple extra recovery days – so we moved up to Serenidad on the airstrip, which I was excited about because it was the weekend again and there were 26 transient planes there… but then I got sick too and spent about 24 hours comatose…. :-(

We all made it back OK, learned a lot about the area, had a great time and some adventure so… hey, it's all good!

A Good Day of Flying

Landed at Birchwood just to be sure I still could, picked up a guy I work with that's visiting from Houston at Merrill, went over to Hood Strip and talked to my latest instructor (a very good guy), toured the guest around Lake George and to Talkeetna for lunch, dropped him back at Merrill and went home to a pretty good pavement crosswind landing. Almost 4 hours, 6 landings... Not a bad day!

Jake, Dave and Dawson

Jake and I took our bikes and went to Dawson for the weekend . It was a great trip and the weather in Dawson was great... for the most part. We rode all around, took our bikes on the ferry and rode around the campground, and generally had a nice time. It was nice to be able to have both bikes, a lot of stuff and get there in only 3 hours flight time.... I love the 180!

The first stop was Northway, 2 hours out of Palmer. We topped off on gas (took 100G into Canada hoping to save money...). Not much there, but we called Canpass for entry into Canada and checked with US Customs so we'd know the drill on the way back. All the Customs stops and contacts were just fine, but I did my homework and was prepared for it... and remembered to take the gun out of the plane, thank goodness. The FSS was great too - I can't believe the rest of the country lost the local flight Service Stations, I drop in at ours all the time and they're always a great help.



Some air taxi guy dropped all these seats in Northway so he could haul some cargo. I wonder if he puts paying passengers in the one held together with rope? We ran into some people in Northway - some from FBX that had mutual friends and 3 guys ferrying a 170 from Minnesota to Palmer.



No problem finding Dawson but we throttled back and went slow so we'd arrive at our exact time, which I don't think they really cared about. There is some waiting since it's only 1 hour flying Northway to Dawson but you're supposed to give 2 hours notice. The Canadian customs person didn't ask us much and seemed pleasantly surprised we had passports. Coming into the airport Jake took the shot of the dredge tailings on the Klondike.


We wandered around in the sun and heat (the weather was perfect) and Jake took this picture of me in the chair at Robert Service's cabin. We went to Jack Londons cabin and the train museum, too.


We stayed in town at Klondike Kate's cabins which was just fine. They gave us a ride to and from the airport and were very nice.

The next day we were leaving and the fog had rolled in which was worrisome (particularly after the recent Homer disaster...)


but it burned off fast and got warm and sunny again for the outhouse races. There were some loco folks racing the outhouses, but the Vikings were my favorite "we drink when we're thirsty, we drink when we're dry and if you don't like it you can bugger off and die..." it was morning but most of the contestants seemed to have the 'It's 5 o'clock somewhere" attitude. Queen Crapper and the Royal Flush were OK too... but they sang their ditty waaaay too much!


When we got out to the airport it was sunny and warm... again. The weather looked good for getting to Northway at least so we figured we'd go that far. There was a Hawker 748 loading up and taking off... real pretty plane and not common. It used almost all of the 5100 feet.


We made it back to Northway no problem, but used the last of their gas. I had to top off with some car gas (which is legal for me to do!). Of course we had way too much gas, but I wanted plenty in case we couldn't get through Mentasta pass (which was forecast crummy), or I got lost in the mountains since I'd never been there before. The Customs guy was very nice but DID ask for a lot of stuff including my pilots license. He filled the form out for us though, and when I called from Dawson to tell him when we'd be there, said it was fine to be early and we didn't have to wait in the plane so we showed up about 30 minutes early. Which, per the USCS instructions is a no-no.

We had to do some pilotage to find the way through Mentasta pass but made it OK, and on the other side of Duffy's it was wide open with just a few showers to dodge. Both times I went by Duffy's they were reporting 1000 and 2 miles or something equally bad when in reality it was 5000 broken both times. Maybe the reporting station "Duffys Tavern" is aptly named....?


It was fun trip I'd like to do again, except go through Eagle (which has Customs also) next time on one leg.