The Great Northwest Air Race and Vacation – Part 3 Onward to Bellingham

Once a race is finished, the lunch served and the awards ceremony completed the airport generally becomes a ghost town. Ephrata still had a couple hundred gliders around with the last day of glider competition still ahead. But even that was tapering off.

While we were getting ready to leave I took a stroll out onto the ramp. There was a big PBY Catalina out there, painted all grey. I wandered around it, looked at is cracked Plexiglas, the flat tires and oil stained ground under its cowlings. It had not moved in a long time. This was the PBY used in the filming of Steven Spielberg’s 1989 movie Always. That movie took the script from the Spencer Tracy movie A Guy Named Joe and adapted it to the fire bomber industry.

 

The PBY has changed ownership a few times but really hasn’t flown since the movie. It was in IMHO, one of the best opening scenes for a movie in which airplanes took a leading role. I think it is kind of ironic that I saw this here since less than a month before I was climbing through it cast-mate, the Fire Eaters A-26 used in the movie. That was in a hangar at Houston’s Hobby Airport where it is now based. That plane is the only two-seater version of an A-26 still flying in the world today.

I finished walking around the airplane, saddened by its forlorn condition and headed back to the terminal building to collect our stuff. We would be crossing the Cascades on our way to Bellingham and the weather wasn’t looking so good over there.

Several of the pilots elected to head south to fly through the Columbia Gorge to get west of the Cascades. They are VFR only pilots and while Linda and I hold instrument ratings and the airplane is certified and capable, I’m not too enthusiastic about taking it into what might be turbulent conditions over mountainous terrain. We have been to about the Stampede Pass route which is the way many were going as well. I’m not so familiar with this and in mountainous terrain and marginal weather, current local knowledge and experience is a must. We had three options, go south to the Columbia Gorge adding a couple hours to the trip, go to Stampede Pass or fly IFR. I filed but wasn’t going to pick it up unless it was really necessary. That became the case.

As soon as we crossed over Ellensburg and headed up the valley toward Stampede Pass we looked at the weather and felt that while we might be able to get through, it was definitely marginal and with no room to turn around later, we did so right away. We picked up the IFR clearance over Ellensburg and it was a rough ride over the mountains. I can only imagine being down there in those passes with the wind coursing through them. There were a lot of planes on that airway in both directions so I assume we were not the only ones to judge the situation accordingly. As soon as we crossed the divide we got lower and the turbulence smoothed out a bit. We got direct to Whidbey Island and then lower still. Once we were out over the sound the weather began to break up a bit. Near Eliza Island we had a beautiful view of the Bellingham harbor, downtown and airport.

We entered a right downwind for runway 16 at Bellingham and were cleared to land. We discovered once we taxied in that we had forgot our towbar in Ephrata. So putting the airplane in the hangar we acquired took a little bit of working it in and out. But once it was housed away safely from the weather we were on our way to see the sights of Bellingham with Linda’s sister and Bo whom had arrived only a little while after we did driving 4 hours from Ephrata.

 

We enjoyed the rest of Saturday in Bellingham and Sunday was a tour day. We enjoyed the fish hatchery and all the waterfalls in the area. We walked and over course looked in antique shops like you are supposed to do on vacation. We ate at a couple nice places but like always, finding things that fit into our diet (Organic Vegan) can be a challenge. Less so I think in the Northwest than in the south though. We always manage though.

Monday morning came early and we had some things to do. One was a stop off in Arlington to meet Ken Blackman, a Grumman guru and discuss with him more speed mods. Ken is the one who put Don Otis’ airplane together so naturally we wanted to see what he could do for us. He was very pleasant and we had a good productive meeting ending with us ordering a Sensenich Prop. Then it was off again southwest bound across the sound and around Seattle’s airspace. More places to go and not so much time to go there.