Flying, Family, Friends & Flowers

We not only got to see Loren’s new plane, a Cirrus 22T – GTS, but we got to fly in it! It’s hangered at Felt’s Field in Spokane.

Felt’s Field from the air…

Mt. Spokane

Hayden Lake, over Mivoden Summer Camp.

The next couple of pictures show Mivoden, and its dock in front of the lodge.

Such a gorgeous plane!

I mentioned that the plane lives in a hanger at Felt’s. The hanger isn’t quite as gorgeous as the plane. Well, the hanger is fine, but the middle one of the three sliding doors had a broken wheel. The doors are suspended by wheels which run in a track, and the only way to replace wheels on the middle door was to completely remove the end door! These doors are frightfully heavy! The previous owner of the hanger, Dave, came to help us replace the wheels. We removed one door, and took the next one partially off, enough to change out the wheels. I let the younger guys do most of the heavy lifting! We got the doors back on and everything runs much more smoothly now!

Our afternoon of work had a couple of distractions- one was this gorgeous old biplane (maybe a Stearman?) …

And what I believe is a Lake Amphibian. When I was a little kid, we lived on a lake in Northern California, and a neighbor had a couple of these interesting amphibians that he docked in the lake in front of his home.

We also saw this warbird with his cowling flared to look more intimidating!

Loren has a friend whose father-in-law was put in hospice in Montana. He asked Loren if he could get a lift to see him there. His wife had already driven there, over a four hour drive. We could fly it in 45 minutes, and then they would be able to drive back together.

So the next morning we met Chuck to fly him to Eureka, Montana. My buddy Bill was in the area, so he got to share the back seat with me. Fun!

It was an absolutely beautiful morning for flying.

After landing in Eureka, we were told that the landing pattern took us over Canada! Two of the guy’s phones said “Welcome to Canada.” Didn’t expect that!

Chuck was met by his brother-in-law, and they headed out together. We fueled up the plane, and took off for home. It was a very quiet little airport… we were the only ones there!

The view on the return trip was even prettier than the trip out. Maybe because I was seeing out the other side…

I put together a video of the trip. An hour and a half cut down to a bit under 6 minutes.

While Bill helped Loren put away the plane, I wandered over to the open hanger across from us. Mike was there, sitting on an old tug. He has two of them there, the green one is from 1946 and the blue one is 1943. (or pretty close to that. I didn’t write it down)

I had a great time talking to my new friend Mike! He has hangers full of memorabilia that would take weeks to catalog and put in the blog!

He told me to climb up on the tug… but be sure I didn’t dent the fender. Turns out the fenders are 2.5 inches thick – solid metal! Far thicker than the frame on our Suburban. Or any truck. Tugs need lots of weight on the drive wheels, so they can pull huge aircraft, and these tugs have it! Very cool!

I really enjoyed meeting Mike and seeing some of his awesome treasures!

Later, while some of the family went to more graduation meetings (where we knew nobody) Loren, Bill, Cherryl and I went to Manito Park. If you’ve read a lot of these blogs, (!) you know we’ve visited here several times. It’s still gorgeous.

Cherryl wanted to fly a bit more…

I had no idea we’d be visiting the Washington Monument. Well, maybe not THE Washington Monument, but a nice tribute to our first president.

On display in the game room of our kid’s house, I noticed this old carving. I did this so long ago I can’t remember when it was… but it was a very long time ago. I makes me want to do another…