2008 Trip to Alaska

I have set up this site to be able to share my flying trip to Alaska in June 2008 with my family and friends.

We plan on leaving our home base of Justin, TX, 16X, on June 21st with our first destination being Billings, MT. We will make one fuel/pit stop along the way in Colorado, near Denver. We will be overnighting the first night in Billings. This will be about 6 hours of flying in getting to Billings.

On June 22nd we will be heading out of Billings to Olympia, WA where there is a person who organizes guided flying trips through Alaska. His company is called Lets Fly Alaska. We will make one fuel/pit stop along the way in Idaho. I've given us an extra day for arriving in Olympia just in case the weather doesn't co-operate with us, so we should have the day of the 23rd, weather permitting, to get acquainted with Olympia.

On the evening of the 23rd we will be attending a dinner and trip briefing along with the other flyer's who will be on the trip, I think a total of 11 planes but I'm not sure on the total at this point.

On the 24th we will be leaving Olympia starting our trip up and through Canada and Alaska. I hope to be able to make a small daily post about our journey along with a few photos. I'm hoping I have figured out how to get the photos uploaded as we fly along each day. You will see posts by date and all you need to do is to click on the date to see that days posts.

Our route will be as follows:

June 24th Olympia to Quesnel
June 25th Quesnel to Whitehorse
June 26th Whithorse to Fairbanks (staying 2 days)
June 28th Fairbanks to Anchorage
June 29th Anchorage to Homer, then back to Anchorage

We will be taking various excursions out of Anchorage until July 2nd. Maybe I'll be able to try my luck at going Salmon fishing.

July 2nd Anchorage To Ketchikan (2 days)
July 4th Ketchikan to Bellingham, WA then on to Missoula, MT - we will have left the group at this point. This will be a somewhat long day of over 1000 miles and we will lose 2 hours on the way because of time zone changes. We'll probably have about 9 hours clock time in route this day, taking into account the time zone change.

July 5th Missoula to Thermopolis, WY

An old Army friend of mine, Tery TenBoer and his wife Carol live in Thermopolis. Terry and I were stationed together in Germany, as my grand kids like to say, back in the day. We will try and do some catching up and possibly I will be able to take him up for a spin around the batch if the weather co-operates.

July 6th We will begin our return route to our home base of 16X - Back to the barn.

Here is a brief view of our route of flight through Canada and Alaska.

http://letsflyalaska.com/images/2009route.jpg

http://letsflyalaska.com/images/route_detail.gif

We're looking forward to a really great trip and hope the weather gods will be co-operative.