New Destinations finally

Back from my 3 day stint, which finally included some destinations that I haven't been to before. It's getting harder and harder to go to places that I haven't already been to.

Friday started with a hop over to Vancouver for a drop off and then we headed to Edmonton for the night. The next morning, bright and early, we departed for Bandon Oregon (just south of North Bend). A very famous golf course is down there and while I've flown into North Bend before, I hadn't flown to Bandon before. It was just a small little airport 20 miles south of North Bend. We did have to make a customs and fuel stop in Spokane first though.

The guys we took down were obviously going down to golf and entertain. They brought quite a haul of booze with them as well. We weren't even 30mins into the flight when the other pilot and I looked at each other as we recognized a very familiar smell wafting up from the back. They were having Bailey's in their coffee at 7:45am! Haha, whatever floats their boat I guess.

Approaching the Oregon coast the weather was a little... turbulent. Low clouds and good winds off the water proved to be as ugly as they looked. The last 10 mins of the flight we were getting bounced around all over the place. After dropping off the folks we needed fuel for our next trip, but the tiny little airport in Bandon didn't offer jet fuel, so we needed to do the quick little 10 min flight up the coast to North Bend. We buckled up tight anticipating the bumpy ride down the coast low level below the clouds. It was uber bumpy and actually got me a little nauseated, enough that I didn't eat anything for the next 3 hrs!

Full of fuel we departed empty for Scottsdale Arizona! Woo hoo, warm desert weather! Somewhere over the middle of Nevada the cloud layers below disappeared and we had good views of the landscape below us the entire flight. It was a 3.5 hr flight and so we each spent over an hour in the back of the plane relaxing. :) Ahh the perks of empty flying. Man, it really is the way to travel! I was all stretched out and had my laptop going, watching some episodes of the Trailer Park Boys and also doing a Sudoku puzzle from one of the papers in the back. We flew directly over Las Vegas and got a good view of it. I had reception on my blackberry and fired off an email to another crew that was spending the weekend there. I told them to "look up!" and their reply was "do a barrel roll!" Haha, I had a good laugh.

It was 30 degrees when we landed in Arizona and was just what the doctor ordered. We took our rental car and headed to the hotel, where we went straight to the pool and just lounged out and got some sun. A nice meal at a local restaurant and then back to the hotel room for some Zzzz's.

It was already 14 degrees in the morning when we woke up to a beautiful Arizona day. Just as we're about to leave the airport we get word that our passengers are already enroute the airport and that they'll have "lots of bags". Well they actually beat us to the airport and holy cow they weren't kidding. The 3 passengers completely filled the plane with luggage and various goodies. They were moving back to Kelowna for the summer months (they have a winter home in Arizona). It all fit, amazingly, and we were out of there and headed direct the BC interior.

A quick drop off and we were off to Vancouver. After a little wait we were off to Edmonton for a drop off and then to Red Deer (just north of Calgary). The flying day had now hit a whopping 15hrs of duty! Now in Red Deer we left the plane for another crew who were taking it out of there really early in the morning. We took the rental car they had used and drove the hour home to Calgary. It was one heck of a long day, finally finishing about 17hrs after departing the hotel room in Scottsdale.

A good set of days, some pretty decent flying and new locations to add to the destination tracker.