N26958 took us on a couple of long-range cross-country trips recently. We had a race in Ephrata, Washington to participate in on June 16th and we made a weeklong vacation out of it. A couple years ago we did a Fall Foliage Tour of the New England area and this time it was the west.
We departed on Thursday, June 14 and bounced our way from Ellington to Andrews County Airport (E11) for our first fuel stop. After one particular bump, I looked at the attitude indicator and it was rolling to one side which immediately caused my eyes to train on the vacuum pressure gauge which was showing near zero. Dang! We continued on towards our destination and from there we were going to decide what we would do. We were planning on two more legs that day ending in Boulder City, Nevada to stay with my brother and his wife. That didn’t happen.
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| N26958 at Andrews County Airport |
Fortunately for us, IA James Marshall of Marshall Aviation was at Andrews County that day and he took a look at the airplane. He didn’t have that model vacuum pump but he was able to locate one at the main airport in Midland, a 40 minute drive south. He made that round trip quickly and did a wonderful job of replacing the part on the airplane, having us on our way in little more than a three hour delay.
Departing Andrews County we had to outrace a thunderstorm coming up from the south. We had been cut off from our planned northwestern route over Albuquerque due to a fire fighting TFR and several airports that didn’t have self-serve fuel and the FBO’s would be closed when we got there. So we rerouted ourselves more directly west, avoiding the restricted areas around White Sands and Alamogordo flying into the night and landing at Safford, AZ (KSAD) where we refueled and then decided to stop for the night. Night flying in the mountains in a single engine airplane and being tired led to this decision to stay. I’m fairly familiar with the terrain but without recent experience and there were those pesky TFRs were all about. Besides, I’m not the devil-may-care freightdog I was 20 years ago. A fresh start in the morning would be better and it was.
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| N26958 crossing over Solo Ranch Airpark NM |
I called my brother and we departed early from Safford. We crossed to the north of Lake Roosevelt and then south of the Four Peaks Wilderness and Payson. I remembered I wanted to show the plane to John Spall in Deer Valley whom we had bought it from but now we were behind schedule and I hadn’t spoken with him (sorry John, we’ll try to catch you again next trip west). So we pressed on over Prescott and the air became crisp and clear at 8,500 feet, most of the forest fire smoke left behind. I remember Boulder City’s airport (KBVU) was busy but it was even more so being peak Grand Canyon tour flight season. A spark lit in my heart when I spotted the first DeHavilland Twin Otter on approach right after we landed. I have 800 hours in those airplanes and though it may have been close to 25 years ago when I last flew one, it is still one of my favorite airplanes.
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| Bonniville Salt Flats in distance |
We spent a little over an hour enjoying my brother and his wife’s company and then we were off once again, this time nearly due north. We went eastward away from Boulder City, crossing the Colorado river to the south of the new bridge which spans the river south of the dam, crossed a ridge and turned northeast over Temple Bar and Lake Mead. We kept our altitude fairly low to stay out of the arrival traffic into Las Vegas McCarren and the Class B airspace. We contacted Nellis Approach and continued northward into some the Military Operation Areas that sit to the east of all that restricted area and “The Box” enclosing Area 51 north of Las Vegas. We were now flying into the Basin and Range Region of the United States. Our destination this time was Twin Falls, Idaho.
I have never flown up this side of the desert, not in a small plane anyway. I have crisscrossed the area from high in the flight levels in a Learjet but not at lower altitudes so it was more interesting and in a lot of ways, more challenging. Firefighting TFR’s, Thunderstorms, mountain wave due to a strong westerly flow over the ridges and a lot of thermal activity contributed to a generally rough ride most of the time on this leg. Area 51 to our left, Great Basin National Park and the Bonneville Salt Flats on our right, we passed by Wendover, Utah Municipal Airport (formerly Air Force Base) where in WW II, the B-29 crews who dropped the Atomic Bomb were trained.
We had to circumnavigate a line of thunderstorms that were coming in from the north, then get back on course to Twin Falls. As we entered to valley to the south of Twin Falls Airport, (KTWF) things began to green-up a bit along the Snake River. I was reminded that this was where Evel Kneivel made his famous non-event jump in a steam-rocket powered “cycle” over the Snake. Well, into the Snake River, more or less. It may sound somewhat critical but I actually admired the guy. After landing on the shorter runway but directly into the 20 knot wind we took some time to eat a little lunch and then headed off in the direction of Boise and after that, Ephrata, WA.
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| N26958 on the Twin Falls, Idaho ramp |
We flew much of this leg over or near the Snake River as it wound its way north along the Idaho-Oregon border and then broke off from it as it went through higher terrain to the east into what is known as the Grand Canyon of the Snake River and Hells Canyon Wilderness. We headed more northwesterly, crossing a few ridges in the late afternoon light, west of Walla Walla, Washington where we had a narrow miss with a small UAV that of course, nobody knew anything about. After that encounter, we continued on past Moses Lakes Airport where Boeing was doing some test flights with one of their fleet and we were on the watch-out for gliders as a large soaring event took place at Ephrata at the same time as the Air Race.
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| Hells Canyon Wilderness |
As we approached Ephrata a familiar voice, one of our fellow racers, greeted us on the radio. We touched down in the waning light of the day and taxied past the hundred or so glider tied down on the northeast end of the tarmac and found a spot amongst the other racers. We proceeded to clean the bugs off the airplane and prepare for the next day’s race.
