KRDM (Bend, OR) January 2017

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Monday’s start watching the weather throughout the week trying to decide if flying is in the forecast for the upcoming weekend! It looks great in the Seattle area and through Portland to Bend with a small chance of rain Sunday. We decide it is a go and meet our friends the Birdie Family on Friday after work. We call Leading Edge in Redmond and secure a rental car for the 6 of us! Yep, we are maxing out the Bonanza! Even the receptionist verify “6 in a bonanza?” I want to tell her it is really 8 since both mama’s are pregnant but resist. We load up all 8 of us in the 6 seater. Weight and Balance numbers show we are limited to 60 gallons of fuel.oreFlight has really revolutionized the pre-flighting process. We have the profile of the plane stored. The App makes it so simple to plug in the passengers in each seat, and help us figure out how to load the bags. We are limited to 70 pounds in the aft baggage compartment, so we use small duffles, backpacks and reusable shopping bags to put weight between the pilot and co-pilot and the second row of seats. ForeFlight also allows us to view our flight path with real time weather, look at notams, and plan fuel.

We stop by the fuel farm since only self service fuel is available at S50. This is also the final opportunity for a bathroom stop. Since the winds are out of the south we take off and just go straight. It is 10 and clear. Seattle Approach even gives us a Class B climb, that never happens. The planned 1:12 trip down is great with smooth air d  beautiful fog for as for as far as the eyes can see east of the Columbia River gorge. The Kids are happy in their carseats watching their iPads. The Little Dude actually wants to wear his headset. I offer him the pilot cadet since it is already plugged in behind him. He doesn’t actually get the concept and yells at us the whole time. He is used to talking louder when we don’t have headsets on. Baby Birdie next to him is just fine without one. The kids snack and we land at KRDM in no time.

The FBO is ready for our arrival, helps us park and brings over the requested 6 passenger car, a Ford Explorer. The Explorer has a 3rd row and we are loading up as the Papa’s head inside the FBO to check us in and grab the FBO staple, popcorn! We’re all ready for dinner and Gramie is going to meet us. We head to Tumalo Feed Company in Tumalo just outside of Bend for a western meal. Tumalo Feed company is the kid of restaurant where your photo hangs on the walls and locals consider it a staple. With full bellies  we seattle for the night.

The next day starts with Mama Pilots favorite, Sparrow Bakery. OMG the Croque-monsieur is the BEST. We love this counter service bakery that is super kid friendly. Anything you order from the display case is handed to you at the counter and there are books and toys to entertain the kids while the rest of the meal is being prepared. Next on our itinerary for the day is the High Desert Museum  which is great for its history of the area and engaging animal exhibits. We stroll tover the mountains ahrough the main building consisting of a “walk through time” of local history.  It is very interactive for the kids and provides a visually stimulating history lesson at the same time.  The kids are super-excited about the bobcat, and Papa Pilot takes a quick look at the Museum’s newest exhibit on Central Oregon during WWII which was impressively done.  As we all meet up again the next stop is the indoor play area for the kids- always a hit and a great way to expel some of that kiddo energy.  The next stop is the Birds of Prey exhibit.  Today we’re lucky enough to catch a presentation on the Peregrine Falcon.  The presenter was very knowledgable and enthusiastic, and kept the kids attention with ease.  The falcon was amazing and the lesson was great as well for both kids and adults alike. What trip to the High Desert Museum is complete without a stop at the otter exhibit?  Sadly, the otters were tucked warmly in their little home and we were only able to see one briefly, but, that just leaves us something else to do on our 7th, 8th, or maybe we’ll be on our 10th trip here-  I can’t remember now. But for today, our list is complete, and the kids are ready for their naps.

After some rest, it is time to play in the snow at Gramies! Since our last visit, Bend has set records with the amount of snow fall and the kids love seeing the animals and eating the snow. We end the day with sushi at 5 fusion (again) in downtown. Since we were a large group we were seated at the front round booth. Ordering sushi with a group is always better since you get to order more rolls and try different things. The first roll was made so fast that we thought they brought it to the wrong table! We followed sushi with delicious gelato at Bonta! Bonta makes their gelato so it isn’t icy and they use local ingredients and offers seasonal flavors.

Sunday starts with a look at the weather as we have to head home today. We choose to eat breakfast at The Victorian Cafe. Breakfast is big business in Bend and there are a bunch of small places to eat. Most utilize outside seating in the warmer months. We had a 15 minute wait for breakfast, not so bad, but they don’t really have a lot of room to wait inside. They do have a outdoor waiting area with a fire place set up. It was cold out, but by the fire it wasn’t too bad.  Once seated we ordered and received our food in the standard 15 minute time frame. The menu says they are famous for their Benedict’s and the spinach and tomato one was delicious. All of our food was good and the kids portions were actually small but more than enough for our age children. The only down side it they don’t have Espresso type drinks.

We have packing and cleaning to do at Grandpa’s house where we stayed before heading for a small tour of the Old Mill District and then off to the airport. We call the FBO on the way and request fuel. We drive to the plane and unload and were taxiing to the runway before long. Then it happens, our first aborted take off as a family! Mama and Papa pilot have both experienced this, but not with a plane filled with 6 people. The gas cap on the pilot side has popped off, right at rotation speed. The Papa’s are in the front and handle the situation and communicate with Redmond tower. We pull off the Runway and the cap is inspected and secured. Another attempt and we are off the ground and the cap stays on! We know there will be some weather as we get north of Portland. We are still in the season of icing so we have to be mindful of the freezing layer. As we get north of the Columbia river, we descend to go below the clouds and north of Centralia pick up an IFR clearance with Seattle Approach for a GPS approach to the Auburn airport. The GPS has a high minimum of 1400 feet, so our alternate airport is KBFI. We climb into the clouds for the MIA and shoot the approach, no problem at all, we are below the freezing level, so we don’t encounter icing and we break out of the clouds well above minimums and cancel our IFR. We land and taxi back to the hangar, unload the baggage and push the bonanza away. Another fun double family vacation has come to a close and were coming to the end of traveling with another family. Once the baby arrives in June, we won’t have the space to accommodate two families anymore. But we have til June!

Travel Crib

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After an abundance of research we decided on the Guava Family Lotus Travel Crib. Since our son is now 3.5 we have not been traveling with it. But we will be using it once again when the new baby comes in June. The Guava Family was an easy choice because it is 11 pounds. Most of the other “pack n’ plays” are 20-30 pounds! The Lotus is light and has backpack carrying straps. It is also really easy to set up and take down. As The Little Dude got older, we really liked how it was on the ground and we could leave it open for him to get in an out of on his own.

We prefer to take our own travel crib if weight and space allow since you never really know what you are getting when a hotel says they have a crib or pack n’ play. We have also stayed in some locations in which upon our arrival we were informed they were out! It is so much easier to just take our own.

Car Seats -> Plane Seats

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We purchased both of The Little Dudes car seats before the plane. He was just over a year and was still rear facing. We initially put him rear facing against our rear facing second row, until the Tillamook incident, then we moved him to the third row left side away from anything he can open.

We have a Diono Radian RXT and a Britax Pavilion. They both offer easy forward facing installation with a seatbelt in the plane. We can also utilize the tether with anchors on the floor. The Little Dude sits up higher in the Britax so it is easier to see outside the plane. The Diono works fine, but not the #1 choice in the plane. We like to keep the Little Dude in the carseat for safety; in case of a hard landing and so he isn’t free to roam. Mama and Papa pilot are normally in the front. Mama pilot does go to the back to hang out with the Little Dude after we are established in flight and returns to the front for landing.

 

KBLI (Bellingham, WA) January 2017

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Getting up in the morning and looking at the weather is always how it starts. “Do we want to go flying today,” my husband and I exchange our favorite sentence. Weather looks okay, but just locally. Snow and freezing temperatures to the east and thunderstorms to the south make traveling those directions challenging. We look at weather to the north and it’s a relatively clear path for the majority of the day. Bellingham? Skagit? Arlington? We have never been to Bellingham before and initial research looks intriguing. We do the basics: Weather, Notams, Check the airport info and in no time we’re off to our airport. We pre-flight, load the car seat, and make sure that the Little Dude has everything he needs for this quick: 32 minute flight. Half tanks are more than enough for this segment, and often our plan is to purchase fuel from where we plan on borrowing a crew car.

 

The Little Dude is super cute getting ready for this trip. He grabs the instruction book for the fuel flow instrument and a pencil and tells us about our schedule. We load up The Little Dude with his essentials (I pad, Headphones) and off we go.

 

The weather is high overcast today but very VFR. We don’t get much winter flying in the PNW because of icing conditions and our lack of deicing equipment, so in our trip planning we err on the side of caution with frozen precipitation in this airplane. It is a smooth flight all the way to Bellingham with a nice path taking us over Lake Sammamish, the Skagit Valley, and nearly directly into a straight in final to runway 34 at Bellingham. The Little Dude is content playing his new paw patrol game and John and I elect not to use flight following. The best part of flying with a 3 year old is that he claps every time we land and that never gets old. After landing we taxi over to Bellingham Aviation Services / Command Aviation to being our exploration of the area. This is the first place we have been that there are 2 separate FBO’s operating out of the same building and we found this a little confusing at first. We didn’t know where the line girl who came out to park us was from. The line girl was from BAS and we found that the services and personnel at BAS were fantastic. They offered us a courtesy car and as soon as we swapped the car seat from the plane to the car, off we went.

 

Since we already had lunch, the $100 hamburger was out. Instead, we decided to head to the down town area to roam. Using Trip Advisor, we found Mallards Ice cream, I’ve never had such a difficult time deciding on a flavor. (Except for maybe at Mora’s on Bainbridge island) We walked to the Bellingham’s farmers market which was nice, but seemed a little out of season. From there we decided to drive to the Historic Fairhaven district. It was a super condensed and tiny version of the original downtown. As we passed through Fairhaven we decided to pass through Fairhaven Park, when Huxley noticed the playground. We let him play for a bit on the great equipment and friendly park visited by many. There’s a nice little river that passes through the park with trails throughout. It is funny how fast 2 hours can go, and we are often surprised how fast we have to return the crew cars! We loaded up and decided to go back to the plane as a bit of weather was moving into the Seattle area and we didn’t want to get stuck. Upon our arrival back to the airport, the FBO was super easy, already had the plane gassed up for us so we paid, pre-flighted and were back in the air to S50.

 

Our return was about 45 minutes since we did some sight seeing.

The Little Dude decided to take a nap on the flight back. We landed back home at S50 and pushed the plane back in the hangar. The Little Dude was sad, he missed the return flight due to his nap. But next weekend is looking clear, so we will see where the winds take us.

 

I tried to take more photos on this trip as we introduced Instagram in connection to our site.

 

Family Tips:

BVS has 2 courtesy cars (a old cop car and a Lincoln Continental.) We had no problem installing the Diono Radian RXT in the Lincoln.

 

 

Headsets

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Head Sets are super important in General Aviation. Unfortunately, we have not found a great option for a headset with a microphone for our son. Kids headsets are bulky and heavy. We purchased the Pilot Cadet for him and he never wears it! We have found the Baby Banz to be the best option for now. The Baby Banz doesn’t provide communication, just hearing protection. The back of the plane is relatively quiet at least; you can carry on a normal conversation with someone sitting next to you without yelling. We have traveled in other airplanes that this is definitely not the case!  Part of the problem is the Pilot Cadet is heavy, but also it is wide and with the headrest of the car seat it just doesn’t work. He once tried the David Clark headset and it was lighter than the pilot cadet, but the ears are just as bulky. I’ve been waiting to test a Bose A20 on him since it look super thin and is good quality, but who wants to give their kid a $1000 headset to pull and yank on?

Mama and papa pilot both have Lightspeed Zulu’s which are great! We love being able to steam music and the quality is great.

 

 

Baby Banz:

Pilot Cadet:

 

David Clark:

Lightspeed Zulu 2:

KSLE (Salem, OR) October 2016

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We flew  to Salem from Albany, OR (S12) October 22th. After we picked up our friend in Arlington we dropped him at the Albany Airport with tentative plans to go stay the evening in KBDN, Just on the other side of the mountains. But, Johns ever changing work schedule required us to be back home for the morning. This is aviation 101, be flexible. So we looked at the airports on the way home and decided on trying the restaurant at the Salem airport.  The flight was a quick 15 minutes and we parked right in front of The Flight deck. The Flight Deck has a great view point on the runway. We had a nice meal and there is a ton of airplane decor covering the inside of the restaurant, which Huxley loved. A quick stop at the self service fuel farm and we were back in the air to S50. Huxley has really figured out how to be a good line boy. He helps us ground the airplane and put away the cable when we are done. We didnt visit an FBO on this stop.

KAWO (Arlington, WA) October 2016

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When a friend calls on a Saturday and asks for a “Ride” to Salem to meet his wife how do you say no? Weather is good and were always looking for a new destination. KAWO is only 50 miles from S50 and a simple 30 minute flight. We loaded up with Little Dude and headed north. We met up with our friend and visited his hangar and got a quick tour of his aircraft he is working on. We didn’t stay long at the airport before departing to our drop off location KSLE. We did notice that there is an on airport breakfast/ lunch restaurant that had an ample deck for outside dining and lots of aircraft parking out front. We did notutilize any FBO’s services at this stop.

We let the little dude free from his car seat on this leg. I was in the back with him. Normally his is in his car seat for the whole trip. We aren’t ready to trust him after the Tillamook incident. We also have 2 seats removed on this flight which gave him a ton more room to stand and move around.

 

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WA09 (Roche Harbor, WA) October, 2016

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It’s a Monday and the weather is great. Should we take some vacation to meet up with friends and go flying? YES! We meet up with our friends the Birdies at S50 and pick where to go! Since the weather is nice in the whole area its game since the weather is 10 and clear. We decide to fly to lunch at Roche Harbor. Roche Harbor is one of 2 airports on San Juan Island. The airplane is the only way to go. Before we had the plane, a trip to the San Juan’s from Seattle could be a 5 hour trip, driving to the ferry, waiting for the ferry, riding the ferry…. Its 30 minutes in the plane. Roche Harbor airport is across the street from Roche Harbor Resort including a: marina, hotel and a few restaurants. The San Juan’s are a very popular summer destination, especially for weddings, but in the off season it is almost a ghost town. We has a great quick flight and land to the north ad taxi the airplane to park on the grass and wonder over to the Lime Kiln Cafe. It is the only restaurant open. Counter service but the food was great at the portions huge! We could have shared! We wonder the property there are some lime kilns left behind from the lime factory, a church and a few shops. We loaded back up after our exploring and took off to the north. The marina and bay is not too far off the end, but off we went. We decided to do a few loops around deception pass and contacted Whidbey Approach for approval. We enjoyed our short flight and were back to S50 in no time.

 

KRDM (Redmond, WA) October 2016

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Another weekend trip to our favorite destination- Bend! We loaded up after work on Friday and used our time machine to turn our 8 hour drive into an hour flight. The flight down was clear and the mountains were all out! We get to fly by Mt. Rainer, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Jefferson. We often vary our final destination between KBDN and KRDM for various reasons, but it generally depends on the weather forecast for when we depart for which we choose. Both airports are equal distance from our usual rendezvous point with family. We check the basics and call Leading Edge to secure a last minute reservation. Leading Edge is our choice of FBOs at KRDM, and we always have great service. Since the main terminal is near by, it is never an issue calling for a last minute rental car. Our flights are so dependent on weather we are never able to book things far in advance, especially in the fall, winter, and early spring. We wanted a 4 wheel drive with hopes of doing some off-roading.

Upon our arrival car is waiting. The Little Dude always loves Leading Edge’s fresh popcorn and makes a quick b-line from the plane to the popcorn machine. A quick unload and we’re on the road before dark. We also got lucky- this weekend isn’t so popular with tourist so we get a room at the Oxford Downtown Bend. Our plans for this trip include walking  places more often. The room at the Oxford is great. We’re fine with a king bed because our little dude seems to end up in our bed anyways. But our room has a wall to wall sofa that is very wide. So we request some extra pillows and blankets and make it his bed. We have learned that  more and more rooms have good sofa beds and this has been really beneficial with kid in tow because we don’t have to bring our Guava travel crib. We try to minimize our BSE (Baby Support Gear) when flying, and have really made a concerted effort to pack as little as possible.  For road trips we  throw anything and everything in the car and go, but with the plane we have that pesky weight and space issue. Since The Little Dude is 3.5, he is potty trained, can sleep anywhere and eats normal food. Therefore we don’t have to pack like we did in days past.

After we get settled, we meet family for dinner at Pizza Mondo downtown which is always a great bet ad the food is alway super-delicious. We don’t use a lot of Trip Advisor on our Bend trips because my husband grew up there.

The next day we are excited to learn about the Bend Fall Festival which made for such a perfect time to have booked a downtown hotel. They close the main road (NW Wall) to cars. We hit the market just before it opens since we’re never seem to sleep past 8, find breakfast and meet Gramie! La Magie Bakery is close by so we get an excellent meal and roam the Festival. They also have a kid’s area with huge bouncing items, so Fun. We drop the Little Dude off with Grammies for a sleep over and mama and papa have a day and  date-night- yum sushi at 5 Fusion!

We spend the next day exploring Camp Sherman, about an hour North of Bend past the quaint town of Sisters. There are tons of places with small cabins that are normally popular in the summer, but deserted on a Sunday night! We Stayed at the Lake Creek Lodge and has a nice 2-room cabin (and nearly the whole resort) all to ourselves. The fun must end so the next morning it was back to the airport to load up and head home. After the preflight activities are complete, we call ground and taxi to runway 11 and off we go. Back to home base in a speedy hour and home in time for dinner.

KRDM (Bend, OR) September 2016

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Were heading to our 2nd home Bend for the weekend! This time we plan to stay in the downtown area and enjoy walking around. We did not know it at the time, but the Harvest Festival is going on just up the block from us. We book our room for two nights at the Oxford Hotel. The hotel is nice with fairly large rooms but it is expensive.

Our Friday night starts with dinner at Pizza Mondo and listening to street musicians. In the Morning, We have breakfast at Mothers cafe and enjoy the festival. The festival includes a kids play area, lots of music, craft vendors and of course food. a few of the downtown streets are closed for it.

After the festival, The Little Dude stays with Gramie and Mama and Papa pilot get to go on an off road adventure around 3 creeks butte and to sushi dinner at 5 fusion.

The next day is fun on Gramies farm and a stay at the lake creek lodge. It is out of season for the Lodge located in Camp Sherman, so it is very quite and they aren’t serving breakfast in the mornings. The salmon are in full swing and we take the little dude to see the fish hatchery. We have dinner at near by Black Butte Ranch before calling it a night. We fly home the next morning to Auburn.