Day 8

We spent Friday nite at a quaint lakeside motel that was a neat place like you see in a picture postcard.


View from the balcony of our room

We said goodbye this morning to two of our guys who were heading back to Alabama - Jerry Hoggatt and Brain Kuntz. We miss ya'll and were glad you were part of the trip. The town of Big Bear sponsored a weekend long marathon of running, biking, street music, etc. Getting back to the airport Sat morning was a problem since most of the town streets were blocked for the 2,000 runners. We finally took off for Truckee-Tahoe, CA over the mountains.



Bob checking the plane before take off

Approaching the 6,000 ft elevation airport over the large Tahoe lake was also a picture postcard scene. We counted as many as 4 gliders in the air. They call this area the glider capital of USA. Again, the takeoff required a very long roll and the climb out to 10,500 feet was extremely slow. This was a very bumpy 3 hour flight across rugged mountains to Coos Bay, Oregon.


Mount Shasta (on the way to Coos Bay) from the plane

Coos Bay airport’s altitude is only 20 feet above sea level. The wind was as bad as I have ever witnessed. It was blowing 25 knots, and gusting to 35 knots. Just as I was about to touch down, a gust lifted my right wing up, and before I was able to recover from that, another one pushed me back up in the air into an unusual attitude that required fast stick motions ! I finally got the plane under control. As we stepped out of the plane, we could hardly walk in the stiff wind. The FBO guys were good enough to allow us to house the planes in their hangar overnight. We borrowed a van from the FBO and now spending the night of needed rest at the Best Western. Incidentally, I failed to mention that we could see a fog bank rolling in as we approached the area. As we landed, the far end of the runway was fogged in and it stalled at this point, thank goodness. Stay tuned for tomorrow.