Fighting stir-craziness by taking the helicopter out for a spin.
I must have brought Arizona weather — the clear cloudless skies but not the heat — with me to central Washington. Since Thursday, the weather here has been pretty much perfect. Saturday was the fourth beautiful day in a row. It was also the sixth day since the last time I’d flown. And while I could have spent another day in my camper or under its awning, reading or writing, with time off for a walk or a bike ride, I was ready to do something more substantial.
It was time to go flying.
I put it off as long as I could. But by 12:30, I was on my way to the airport, where Zero-Mike-Lima is resting in a rented T-hangar. I put the pilot door back on, stowed my helmet in the big plastic storage box I keep in the hangar to keep dust off my things. Then I installed my POV.1 camera on the helicopter’s nose and hooked it into the audio system. The helicopter had already been pre-flighted on Tuesday when I thought I was going to fly for work, so I just hooked up the tow bar and dragged the helicopter out to the ramp.
I took my time about it. I wasn’t in any rush. Truth is, I still hadn’t decided on where I was going to go. In fact, even when I took off at about 1 PM, I didn’t know for sure where I was going.
I headed southwest, over the golf course and campground where I’m staying. Then I continued on toward the Gorge Amphitheater. There’s a resort/winery near there called Cave B and I wanted to identify it from the air. I’m also hoping to get some tour flights on nice days with some of their guests. (It’s nice to fly, but it’s nicer to fly when someone else is paying you to do it.) From there, I hopped on the Columbia River, making a hard right to follow it upriver toward Wenatchee.
The Columbia River is one of the great rivers of America. It starts somewhere up in Canada and winds southwest through valleys, canyons, and steep gorges, with numerous dams along the way. The dams aren’t in place to hold back water in an arid land. Instead, they’re in place to generate electricity. This gives the residents of Washington State cheap, reliable power. It also makes a little place like Quincy, WA attractive for companies like Microsoft and Intuit, both of which have built data centers among the crops.
In this area, where the river flows in a wide valley, there’s often orchards alongside. The first of these along my flight path was at Crescent Bar, where a cherry orchard stretches up the side of the hill. Crescent Bar is a recreational area, with campgrounds, condos, boat ramps, and a golf course. It was surprisingly quiet that day — a Saturday — and I could only assume that cold water or high gas prices kept boaters out of the water.
I continued upriver, snapping photos of the orchards I was responsible for drying that season. The photos didn’t come out very good; there was a lot of glare in the cockpit bubble. Most of these orchards are not far above water level. It’s warmer at these elevations than it is on higher terrain, closer to Quincy. I’d be drying the higher elevation orchards in the next part of the season. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d be sent farther north when that was done, perhaps to dry cherries closer to the Canadian border in August.
I got a photo of the Rock Island Dam as I overflew it. I know it’s not the best photo, but it does give you an idea of the kinds of dams along this river. Most of them are short and wide, spanning the river and allowing the water to drop just a few feet. This is apparently enough to generate mass quantities of electricity. The drawback to all this is the power lines — they’re all over the place anywhere near a dam. This is a hazard for low-flying aircraft. Although I’ve cruised parts of the Colorado River at just a few hundred feet, I’d never do the same here. Too many damn wires!
Beyond the dam was the outskirts of Wenatchee. I took one photo while still downriver, hoping to capture the snow-capped mountains in the distance, but forgot to take any photos while closer. Instead, I let the POV.1 video camera do the job. Here’s a segment of video as I flew along the Columbia River through Wenatchee. East Wenatchee is on the right and Wenatchee is on the left.
(Keep in mind that the video camera is mounted on the outside of the helicopter, on its nose. I have no way to adjust it in flight, so sometimes I mention things that simply are not visible to the camera.)
I continued on up the river, passing over a number of dams and overflying more small communities on the banks of the river. I could have lived in any of those houses — at least in the summer months. I assume the area gets pretty darn cold in the winter.
I reached Chelan Falls about 40 minutes into the flight and followed them up to Lake Chelan. The falls were a beautiful turquoise blue color — probably a trick of the light on the rushing water. The video doesn’t do it justice. I overflew the town and flew partway up the northeast shore of the lake, then made a U-turn and returned back to the Columbia River. I’ll have to explore Chelan another time. (If the weather continues to keep me free from flying duties, I may drive up tomorrow!)
I continued up the Columbia with the vague idea of flying to the Coulee Dam. I was overflying another dam when I checked my chart and realized I still had quite a distance to go. I honestly can’t afford to spend too much unpaid time in the helicopter, so I cut the flight short, climbing up out of the valley to the southeast. At first, I thought I’d go back to Ephrata for fuel, but then decided to beeline it to Wenatchee. I wanted to check out the fuel facility there, since I’m likely to stop there for fuel when drying some of my orchards.
I landed and topped off my tanks at the self-serve pumps. It’s vital that I have full tanks of fuel when I start flying for cherry work, and I brought the level all the way up to the top of both tanks. Then I went inside to chat with the guys in the FBO. One, the guy at the desk, was a “nice young man” kind of kid — 18 years old, friendly, eager to help. He asked me questions about flying helicopters for a living. The other guy, the line guy, was a bit older and kind of crude and bossy. When I mentioned I was in the area to dry cherries, he cut me off before I could finish talking and told me to move my helicopter to the end of the ramp. I told him I wasn’t based in Wenatchee and I think he had a problem understanding that. I tried to limit my conversation to the desk guy, but the line guy kept butting in. After a while, I got tired of it and left.
I flew back along the Columbia River as far as Crescent Bar, then climbed up to Quincy. The video below records that 15-minute flight, beginning just after takeoff in Wenatchee.
It had been a great flight with near perfect weather. But I’m looking forward to doing the kind of flying that brought me here. You can bet I’ll report on that when I get a good taste of it.
With that load off my mind, I could goof off a little. I drove into downtown Wenatchee and parked right on Wenatchee Avenue. I immediately spotted a Mongolian BBQ restaurant. I hadn’t had Mongolian BBQ in 10-15 years and my stomach was grumbling for lunch — it was 12:15 PM, after all — so I went in. I had a great lunch. Then I came back out into the sunshine and walked a few blocks down and then up Wenatchee Avenue, looking into the shops. There’s a great sporting goods shop on the east side of the street and I’ll probably be going back next week to buy a new bicycle seat there. I treated myself to a vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso on top before heading back to the truck.
I took photos as I flew. Most of them didn’t come out very well. The ones you see here are passable. In this shot, I’ve just left the Bellevue/Renton area. You can see the thick clouds hanging low over snow-capped peaks beyond Preston.
As I neared Snoqualmie Pass, the space between the mountains narrowed. I-90 wound along mountain slopes in a canyon. The clouds seemed lower. I began to wonder whether I’d be clouded in after all.
But then I was through the pass and descending past a series of long, narrow lakes on the east side of the pass. Beautiful scenery. I caught sight of a few grass airstrips along the way and found them on the sectional chart I’d left folded open on the passenger seat. I took a picture of one of them, but it was too out of focus to keep, let alone share here.
I continued my descent. Soon I was coming out of the Cascades, approaching the rolling hills so similar to those around Quincy. I overflew Ellenburg Airport and continued east along I-90.
I crossed the river 1,000 feet above it, just south of the I-90 bridge. Then I headed south through a gap in basalt cliffs. And that’s when I caught sight (and took a photo) of a typically nighmarish orchard setup. In this photo, you see fruit trees separated by tall poplar trees planted as wind breaks. The tall trees might be 80 feet tall; the trees in the orchard blocks between them might be 10 to 20 feet tall. If any of those trees were cherry trees, some poor pilot would be maneuvering between the tall trees after a rainfall to dry the shorter ones. I’m just glad none of these orchard blocks are mine.
Although I’d planned to stop at Wenatchee, I decided to go straight to Quincy instead. I’d fuel up the next day. I was tired and just wanted to put the helicopter away and go home to my camper. So I punched Quincy (80T) into my GPS, flew up the river past the Gorge Amphitheater (shown here), and homed in on Quincy, flying over my trailer at the golf course on the way.
I’m writing this from the dining table in my 21-foot pull trailer. I pulled it to Quincy, WA on the back of my 1994 Ford pickup truck from Wickenburg, AZ last week. You can read about each day of that journey 
My trailer is comfortable. It’s 21 feet long, but none of that floor space is taken up with beds. Instead, the beds drop down in their own little tent-like structures on the front and back of the camper. Each bed is slightly smaller than queen sized. Their mattresses are 6-inch foam. Because I only need one bed, I stacked two mattresses on the back bed and put linens on that. The other bed is open, but I’m using it for storage and for Alex’s cage.
My bed has flannel sheets and three blankets on it. Since I added the third blanket, I’ve been sleeping remarkably well. In fact, when I wake at sunrise (around 5 AM) with Alex’s first words, I feel cosy and refreshed. I don’t want to get out of bed. This is extremely unusual for me — at home, I jump out of bed as soon as I wake.