Today I took Stacey, Justus, and Melinda to lake Billy Chinook in central OR. The plan was to fly out there to meet with some of Melinda’s friends that were there. Since it was a 4 hour drive or a 1 hour flight, taking Serenity seemed the best option. So at about 9:45 we took off from Vancouver and headed out to the lake. The air was hazy but the scenery was spectacular. You can see the flight track here.
I had some trouble closing my flight plan because we were in such a remote location and the facilities directory had the wrong frequency listed. FYI it is 122.5 in that region. We did a quick flyover of the lake and circled back to the airfield. I lined up for approach and set her down on the unmarked asphalt strip. Landing was pretty smooth. There is a hump in the runway that made it a bit of a challenge but it worked well. There was no paved location to put the airplane so we just put her in the field. I even managed to cut some of the weeds with the prop.
After we got out of the plane, we found out that there was little to no cellular coverage out there and we could not call the people we were meeting. There are no airport facilities at all at this airfield so I walked over to a home that is on the field and talked to Jack. He was a very nice man and even loaned us his car to go meet our group. We drove up and down the canyon looking for them and after several failed attempts at different camp sites we eventually found them. We got a ride back to the airport to return the car and then back to the lake. We played in the lake for a while and then got yet another ride back to the airport.
It was now about 107degrees out and the airport is already 3000 feet high. The plane was full with 4 occupants and our stuff for the day. Even with all of this, Serenity performed admirably. I had no trouble taking off and getting a decent climb. I made a pass over the lake to say good bye to everyone and then set a course for Seaside, OR. The flight was uneventful with the exception of skydivers in the vicinity of our flight path. I stayed on the radio with the jump planes and stayed at least 10 miles from their drop zone. We over flew Hillsboro airport and continued out to the coast. When we got to Seaside we saw that it was completely covered by a marine layer. We diverted to Astoria to find the same thing. We decided to head home at this point as it was hot and we were all tired.
In all we flew about 380 miles and about 4 hours of total running time. I want to say thank you to all of those who helped us out that day.
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