John & Anne Wiley

We had some fun in the wee hours last night, tallying up some stuff from our N by NW trip. Looks like about 9,600 miles covered in about 77 hours of flying. About 40 minutes of that flying was in darkness over familiar terrain. We flew in light to negligible rain four or five times, once in moderate rain, once in light hail, and nearly all of the trip in some amount of visible smoke or haze. Today on the smoke maps I notice that nearly all of our route is no longer shown with significant smoke, and once the fog cleared this morning our mountain view is deliciously crisp (we’re talking about taking an evening “homecoming” flight to enjoy the clear air!). We had ten nights in hotels and eight camping, including our little experiment: sleeping in Tripp.

That was at Terrace, when we decided to try out the cozy bed for two idea we’d heard from an expert SBA pilot. By rearranging stuff with the rear seat back removed, you can create a nice platform from the rear baggage area up to the front seat backs. I put bungees on to keep the front seat backs tilted forward, and inflated a twin-size airmat that was slightly squeezed where it entered the rear baggage area for four inches or so where the width tapers toward the tail. Looked pretty good. It wasn’t! The airmat took up too much of the small vertical space inside the tail baggage area, so it was impossible to roll over without pointing your toes. It was also too short for my 6’1″ without keeping my knees bent, and for two people the art of synchronized turning is also required. That was a very brief and troubled sleep, and it ended with an intense claustrophobic gasp that woke us both. It took a moment to realize it had come from me, and then I devoted a minute or two to meditation on transcending the illusion of inability to breathe, and after a very brief and groggy convo we decided to exit the aircraft. While I was struggling to invent a means of escape other than slithering face-first down the landing gear, Anne in one deft “Houdini” movement was standing outside wearing an especially broad smile as she danced and stretched. We then put up the tent and slept soundly for another two hours until the tent gradually collapsed onto my face, though that event was more quickly and easily resolved by just relocating on the luxurious padded queen-size airmat until the tent encroachment was avoided. As we’ve already written, the sleep ended a few hours later when airport security informed us in perfect Canadian etiquette that we needed to move everything back another 20 feet from the taxiway. In case you’re wondering, the tent collapse was due to the pockets that hold the poles having holes in them (thus the poles slip until the tent eventually stretches out flat on the ground with poles protruding through the pockets, though we woke before that happened).

Anyway! Here’s a map with our actual GPS track, except for a couple of small voids where I was futzing with the GPS and one short stretch hand-drawn where I’d forgotten to start a new track before the current one hit max and began deleting the end. The result of that was a long caterpillar shape moving across the continent with a growing gap behind it that no longer showed where it had been. Had I not remembered to do the two or three clicks to fix it, we’d have only the last 1/4 or so of our adventure from the GPS. I’ve added the airports we stopped at, for context.

GPS Tracks With Airports

Our longest flights were about 4-5 hours, and our longest day (with two flights) was probably from Medford home with the refreshing lunch stop at Sonoma. Most days were a leisurely 2-3 hours of flying, with lots of diversions here and there to look at stuff and some fun convos about where and when to take our next stop. Several times we planned a stop and then changed plans on a whim, based on the looks of our intended destination, or when weather (including smoke) invited us to reconsider.

You’ll recall that we landed at some of the airports (and some cities) more than once so here’s the complete list of our 29 landings since leaving SBA, in sequence:
Santa Ynez, CA *Night
Tonopah, NV
Jackson Hole, WY
Red Lodge, MT
Sheridan, WY
Pierre, SD
Ellendale, ND
Fond du Lac, WI
Sault Ste. Marie, MI
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thunder Bay, ON
Fort Frances, ON
Winnepeg, MB
Regina, SK
Unity, SK
Edmonton, AB (Municipal)
Jasper-Hinton, AB
Burns Lake, BC
Pr. Rupert, BC
Terrace, BC
Ketchikan, AK
Smithers, BC
Pr. George, BC
Jasper-Hinton, AB
Edmonton, AB (International)
Glacier Park, MT
Medford, OR
Sonoma, CA
SBA *Night