Mountain views and a blanket of clouds!

Yesterday the weather in Vancouver cleared up for a little while and I needed to test out my new Bose Aviation X headset.  I also needed to test the two new passenger sets. (I now have one for every seat)  I asked Stacey to call her friend Laurie, who previously declared that she would never fly in a small airplane, and see if she wanted to go with us.  She responded with more excitement then I had expected and we planned to leave at 3pm.  Stacy got to the airport and ran through the preflight, while we waited for 3pm and Laurie to arrive.  Laurie got there and we rolled Serenity out of her hangar.  I went over a preflight brief, completed the run-up and then taxied to the runway.  PDX cleared us for takeoff and we speed off toward downtown.  We flew over downtown PDX and followed the Willamette river for a while.  then Laurie noticed how great Mt. Hood looked and we headed out that direction.  We passed around the mountain and Laurie and Stacey took pictures.  Stacey began telling Laurie that Mt. St. Helens was very impressive as well.  Being so hard to convince, I decided to head out that way.  We spent most of the time over the clouds at about 8000ft.  We made a pass of St. Helens and then headed home.  while we were out the weather had declined and the cloud layer had almost completely closed up.  The sun was setting providing a glorious view while I hunted for a way home.  We found an opening about 10 miles north of Vancouver and popped down below the clouds.  it was so dark and gloomy down near the surface compared to the view we had been enjoying for the past three hours.  As we got closer to the airport, Laurie told me that she was nervous about landing.  I tried to explain that it was not a big deal but notices that she was still very tense on flare out.  We taxied back to the hangar and put the airplane back in.  It was a lot of fun, and I am really glad that we had the opportunity to share flying with someone who thought they would be scared.  In the end she seemed to be on one of those euphoric highs that flying brings to some of us.  It was really rewarding.