Day 15 - Billings, MT to Everett, WA
Today is the last day of my journey across the country. I have seen many things, reconnected with old friends, and spent many hours in the sky.
I started the blog with a reference to the Aborigines of Australia going Walkabout as part of my motivation for a Flyabout. Another related concept are the Songlines. In a book by the same name, Bruce Chatwin explains that aborigines could walk from one end of the continent along a given path by memorizing the song for the route. The song would be full of myths and allegories, but its tune and rhythm would be familiar to people along the route, even if they spoke a different language.
When I travel in my plane, I follow a sort of songline as well. As I crossed Pennsylvania and headed into New England, I listened to the soundtracks of the plays 1776 and Hamilton. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation, I found many of the themes in these works applicable to both my travels and our lives today.
As I complete this final leg, I will follow my tradition of listening to some pieces by Mason Williams and Gary Jess, each having written pieces dedicated or inspired by places in Idaho and Washington. I started the tradition of listening to them as I was in the home stretch while coming home from air shows in the mid-90’s.
I awoke this morning at 4:15 due to prop lag (like jet lag, only slower). Since the bathroom was only 10 feet away instead of 1/4 mile like it had been at Oshkosh, I was able to go back to sleep for another hour and a half. I packed away my very dry camping gear (15% relative humidity gets the job done fast!) and checked out.
When I opened the shades of my 10th floor hotel room, I was amazed to see a fleet of hot air balloons floating low over the city. One in particular caught my attention and made me laugh at the irony: a balloon shaped like a dinosaur floating over the oil refinery on the edge of town.
I grabbed a muffin for breakfast and caught the shuttle back to the airport. After a quick refueling, I launched into the haze with the sun at my back, which was a blessing. Flying for hours while chasing the setting sun on a hot day as I did yesterday is brutal.
While I strain my eyes through the smoke to see mountains and other planes, I am also trying to strategically manage my course. Unlike out over the Great Plains where I could fly in a straight line and know that there was a patchwork of roads on section lines that could serve as a place to put down in a pinch, here in the mountain west I try to balance my desire for the shortest route home against the desire to stay within gliding distance of a field or road. I always try to minimize the amount of time where I don’t have a landing option.
The mountains are beautiful, but inhospitable if I need to put down
A good example of this strategy is when I am closest to home. Coming out of the mountains by Spokane, I could fly almost due west to my home airport. Instead, I deviate almost 60 miles to the south to pick up I-90 near Ellensberg and follow it over the Cascade Mountains. This detour adds 20 minutes to each trip over the rocks, but if something goes wrong, the options it provides could add years to my life compare to cutting straight across the mountains.
Navigation has changed immensely in the 40 years that I have been flying. When I started, the emphasis was on map and compass, while electronics consisted of homing in on ground-based transmitters. I will admit that on my first Flyabout with Kay in 1991, we were flying low under an overcast and got lost. We couldn’t get any radio signals because of our altitude, so we spotted a town and circled its water tower to get the town’s name, which then enabled us to get back on course.
Today, I have GPS which gives me my position to within inches. Instead of paper charts, I use electronic charts. Ironically, just west of Missoula, there is a holdover of a long-past era: the airmail beacon system.
In the 1920’s when the government gave out contracts for companies to fly the mail, a bunch of daring (foolhardy?) men like Charles Lindbergh hopped into under-powered, unreliable planes with no lights or navigational systems. They flew day and night, through all kinds of weather. Here in the mountainous Pacific Northwest, a series of lighted beacons was set up from Spokane over to Billings, on a path now followed by I-90. Several of these beacons still exist, and a few are still lighted. I look for them every time I fly the route.
If you look carefully, the tower on the left with the orange square at the top is one of the lighted beacons west of MIssoula
As I was about to exit the Idaho panhandle by Coeur d’Alene, ID, I was looking at a ski resort and noticed thin wisps of smoke coming from just over the ridge line behind it. I turned south off my course to investigate and found tow “hot spots” places where either lightning or humans had just started a fire. I recorded the position and then radioed all the details to an organization called Flight Service, an FAA agency that performs a wide range of tasks. In some ways, they are almost the pilot’s airborne concierge service.
Out of the mountains, although there is still smoke haze, I could now see almost 20 miles, not the 3-5 miles from earlier in the morning.
Central Washington
One reason for the clearer air is a shift in the winds aloft. Instead of a 17 knot headwind, it is now a crosswind out of the north, allowing me to pick up my ground speed to 165 knots, all while getting almost 20 miles per gallon. While not as good as a car, I go in straight lines and do it while scooting along at about 190 mph - not too bad.
As I crossed the central basin of Washington ( the flat farmlands between Spokane and the Cascade Mountains), traversed bands of dense smoke about 10 miles wide, with similar bands of clear air in between. I believe that these are aerial rivers of smoke coming down out of Canada.
Crossing the Cascades, I tried to pop up to see Mount Rainier, but even at 13,000’, there was too much smoke. As I came into the Puget Sound, I still had one more task to do…
I was an airshow pilot back in the 1990s before cell phones were in common use. As a result, I had to use payphones a lot, which were a real pain. Kay and I worked out an arrangement when I came back from a long trip to let her know that I was safe and sound. When I would be home, I would fly over the house, read the engine a few times as a circled overhead, and wait until I saw her come outside and wave to me. With that, I would give her a mighty wing rock and then head north to my airport. She even knew that I was OK and that I would be home in 90 minutes.
Today, I was able to look at my phone and see on Google maps that she was out and about. I then placed a cell phone call to her through my airplanes on board radios and through the phone, allowing me to find where she was and coordinate, I could fly over and waved to her. She was in a park next to our son Sean’s apartment. I flew overhead, we saw each other, she waved, and I rocked my wings.
There is Kay! What, you can't see her? She is the little dot in the square protrusion of the arched walkway slightly left of the center of the image.
I flew an uneventful last little bit into my home field of Paine Field, Washington. I put the plane away, started an oil change by draining all the old oil, and closed to hangar doors on an amazing journey.
My home field, Paine Field
My trusty steed is back in the barn
For those of you into metrics, here is a quick summary of the trip:
- 44.2 flight hours
- 6,006 nautical miles (that's about 6,911 statute miles)
- Landed at 21 different airports
