A Trip to Vancouver and Back

It all started because Elaine found that plane tickets to Europe cost about half as much if the embarkation point was Vancouver BC. So I volunteered to drive her and a friend the 7 hours through Seattle and up to Vancouver for the drop off. We planned poorly and hit rush hour on Seattle's northbound 405. We took the express lanes so it wasn't too bad. The whole trip over was fairly uneventful. 

I found a nice 1920s bungalow Bed & Breakfast (Clair's) in a small Vancouver suburb named Ladner. The decor was a bit colorful, but we had a wonderfully pleasant host. 

Here are my digs. 

Cosy twins in the next room with the roof eaves right overhead always makes for the most comfy sleep. Everyone slept well. 

I got the kids to the airport with plenty of time and then began my somewhat leisurely drive home. 

Two things I want to do on this trip: 1) see the air museum in Concrete WA, and 2) drive the North Cascades highway. 

I didn't write it up as an adventure, but last year Mike and I flew over to the Arlington air show. 

Here we are sitting under the wing of the Monocoupe amongst the completely fried grass that year. 

Anyhow, while there we met Drew, a pilot/mechanic from the North Cascades Vintage Aircraft Museum. I couldn't help but notice the tattoo on his forearm that looked just like a sticker on the door of my plane portraying the logo of the National Air Races of the 1930s:

Here's a facsimile of the tattoo. He just had the winged head. You can barely make out the sticker on the door of the plane in the above image. 

Drew's museum brought down at least five planes from their collection, including a Mooney Mite, which is why I started talking with Drew in the first place. I have a Mite project and I'd never seen one all together in person before. I had a lot of questions. 

This museum is never before heard of is why I wanted to stop in Concrete. It's a pretty good collection, but way off the beaten path. 

The museum was closed this day, but the  airport gate and a couple of the hangars were open, so wandered in an used my Monocoupe card to get a private tour of the entire collection. Ever since I bought this plane, I get private tours from every aviation museum I come upon. I don't even have to have the airplane with me. And they've usually heard of me. It's a small circle of people that know and appreciate planes to this level of detail. 

On with the tour. The museum has 6 hangars that house about 8 planes each for about 50 planes, most falling in the pre-to-post war period. Oh yes, the thing to notice in the above pic is not the cub in front, but Douglas cockpit up in the peak of the hangar. I can't tell if it's a DC-3 or a DC-6 from here, but I'll guess 3. 

The first plane I noticed amongst all the fine planes here was the Baby Lakes. It was designed as a mini Great Lakes, and from all I've heard, it lives up to that name very well, except for a reputation for short-coupled quickness worse than a Pitts. The only way to land it is with a locking tail wheel. I, of course, liked it because it was tiny it was, making it the most affordable and achievable plane that a young man could ever dream of. Look at it! It's barely 5 feet tall. 450# empty. Ah the hours I wasted on that dream (and the Powell Racer -- look it up )

Next is the museum's newly acquired Beech Staggerwing. The story of the flight from Pennsylvania is found here: http://vintageaircraftmuseum.org/. It's an interesting read, much like my own blog of last summer's cross-country odyssey in the Monocoupe. 

But here is the real reason I wanted to visit this museum. "The Spirit of Dynamite" is a 165 hp Warner Scarab powered Clipwing Monocoupe. And it is beautiful. You know, I was so busy looking at all the planes that I forgot to take a moment to look inside this one to see if it has the offset right stick as mine does. 

Wait a minute, I think I recall that I did, and it does. 

Well, that was an awesome start to a road trip. Can't wait to go back there. In fact, this trip turned into a series of visits to airports I've never seen before. It's kind of like that scene in the Patton movie where George C Scott says "I can smell a battlefield."  I am the same way with airports. All told, I stopped at six airports in this trip. Few pictures, though. 

On with the trip. Here is the Diablo Dam, of Seattle City Light. This is at the west foot of the North Cascades pass, the low end. Something like 2000 ft elevation here. 

Interesting pass from a pilot's perspective. The east end still has snow in the second week of May. Its 5300 ft at ground level, and I wouldn't fly it below 6000 ft, but the peaks immediately surrounding are in the 8500 ft range. And it's quite a long pass, around 40 miles. As passes go, Snoqualmie is much lower, shorter, and amenable to engine failure. And if you're really a chicken, just fly the Gorge. The highest spot on the way to the Gorge is just east of Colfax. 

And I'd never been to Winthrop (the entire Methow Valley for that matter) before, and it turned out to be THE perfect week for doing so. The locust trees in Winthrop were in full bloom. And I've never seen thicker or smelled more fragrant locust blossoms. Everywhere by the river. 

The above pic shows my seat and beer (a wonderful milky stout) for lunch at "The Schoolhouse" brewpub. It was actually hard to find the place. I saw the sign by a skinny door/building that I walked right by, wondering "where is this brewpub?" Turns out the building is sort of triangular, narrow as the door at the front and widening as it backs to the river. Plus the Main Street entrance is 10 ft above the river bank, so the back patio has two levels, the lower, larger one being right on the river bank with a beautiful natural canopy of locust blossoms. 

And the blossoms, here hanging right over my head, imparted a lovely scent reminiscent of orange blossom water, which was exceptionally complimentary to my meal. Well, that was a lucky find. 

It was so nice that I bought a tshirt. 

I poked the nose of the car into the Winthrop and Twist airports, but saw nothing of interest until the Pateros airport where I found a passel of Sikorsky CH-34 (Choctaws). Not sure what they're used for. Didn't stop to ask. 

Lots of them. 

But the real find at the Pateros airport was the future tour bus of my new band: "Electric Love Bucket." I should have found out who owned it, but, again, I didn't stop to ask. 

All this airport and scenery touring ended when dusk (and the wandering deer) caught up to me at Grand Coulee, so I got a hotel for the night. 

Tomorrow: Steamboat Rock.