Orcas Island’s airport (ORS) hosts an annual fly-in every August, hosted by EAA Chapter 937.  Ann and I visited yesterday evening. These island airports are busy with smaller aircraft, as  package carriers (UPS, FedEx) fly parcels in at ORS using single engine Cessna Caravans . The largest plane I’ve seen was a Lear jet.

On any given summer weekend, you can find fly-in campers at this airfield, with tents pitched next to their aircraft in the grass tie-down area. The field is very hospitable to the backpack flyers, and has provided a restroom with a hot shower (donation encouraged). It’s charming to see one or two of these planes tied down with a colorful nylon tent pitched under the wing.

Camping year ’round is very laid back for a general aviation airport, but ORS goes one better: A few of the aircraft owners have set up their hangars as ad hoc get-away “cabins”, with the means to fix a meal, or comfortably pass a night in.

It’s a busy airport in its own right, but the annual Fly-In fills the field up with numerous beautiful and some rare birds, as well as an enthusiastic crowd of pilots and co-pilots. Tents are everywhere, and confabs of flyers gabbing in circles of folding canvas camp chairs in-between them. Four guys from an EAA chapter east of Tacoma sat in the midst of their Vans home-built project planes (three RV-4s and an RV-10), sharing salsa with tequila shots.   I traded jokes with them, and was offered a shot in turn (cheerfully declined), and bite of salsa (peppery and piquant). Strolling with Ann among the gathered pilots, it occurred to me that these people were one of my natural social tribes. I could understand and appreciate the eavesdropped conversations, and could comfortably join in on many of them.

A barbecue buffet was offered for a very reasonable donation in one of the open house hangars, and we feasted on cheese burgers, sides and salad. We hunkered down with paper plates piled high, sharing our table with a old flyer from San Juan Island . He spoke of learning to fly between these islands 50 years ago, landing and taking off from pastures more often than from runways.

All in all, I’m very glad we chanced upon the annual Fly-In for its first evening. We lucked into a warm and gracious meal among strangers who, through the common interest of planes and flying,  weren’t really strangers at all.

A Mission At Dawn

Yesterday, Ann and I set out on a special mission, its purpose one of compassion. We were determined to bring about a happy reunion, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

Orcas Island is one of the San Juan Islands, the largest of which are served by a state-sponsored inter-island ferry service which is free to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. It’s popular to hop the ferry over to the other islands to see their unique sights, and savor their special ambiances. All well and good for tourists, but we were not tourists! (Ok, we WERE tourists, but, hey, it’s called MULTI-TASKING!)

Up before dawn, and with but coffee for our breakfast, we drove down the summit, re-securing the night gate  behind us.  We made our way to the ferry at West Sound, where  the Orcas Hotel provided round two of coffee, with a side of muffin. Incidentally, the grill and tap room at the Orcas Hotel is just wonderful, with an old jukebox sporting a bronze plaque dedicating it to some previous managers of the hotel. The place looks like a proper Fawlty Towers sort of B&B, but without Basil Fawlty to gum up the works. The ferry arrived, and off we went, sufficiently caffeinated, into the rising sun, gliding across the inlets and channels of the San Juans.

At Friday Harbor, our mission was to find Cammille, who was waiting at (according to my memory of it) some vaguely nautical sounding coffee shop. I asked several people where to find ‘The Salty Dog’.  She was awaiting us seated, just where she should be, in a place called ‘The Crow’s Nest’.  (Ok, that worked! ) Next up: The Joyful Reunion…

The Joyful Reunion

“Are you Cammille?”, I asked.

“Yes, are you Mr. Walsh?”, said Cammille, a hopeful light in her once sad eyes.

“I am! This is Ann, and here…”, I said, “…is your wallet!”, producing the once lost object with a flourish.

Cammille had dropped her wallet at the summit of Mt. Constitution the previous day while biking up there on a day trip from San Juan Island. A kind and honest soul had turned it in to us unmolested, and we had located Cammille by searching the internet. LinkedIn yielded a business name, which in turn helped us to obtain Cammille’s cell number, and our rendezvous was thus established. It seemed like a great excuse to day trip to Friday Harbor. Ann and I smiled, mission accomplished, and prepared to take our leave, but Cammille wouldn’t hear of it, and offered to drive us around San Juan, and show us the sights. “Delighted to!,” said we.

Cammille’s stories about working, biking and vacationing on San Juan were even better that the amazing coastal trails she hiked with us. A northern Californian, she had been living there for the past few months doing body work for a spa. Time would eventually take her back to California, but in the meantime she was enjoying the beauty of these islands. Here’s a small gallery of the sights we saw yesterday:

Such an amazing place we’re living in, and with such wonderful people!

Last night I attended a sunset Bat Talk presented by young scientist and educator whose passion for her subject was utterly infectious. She is Rochelle Kelly, Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Biology, University of Washington. (I think of her this morning as the Bat Girl.)

This woman knows her subject, and wasn’t shy about presenting the cool, post-graduate level facts and bleeding edge science being done in the world of bat research.

There are ten different species of bats on Orcas Island. They are nocturnal flying mammals, of course. One of the species found on Orcas is also the only known species of bat found in the Hawaiian Islands.  And, yes, it is presumed that they flew there from both the American and Asian continents, because there are two distinct genetic sub-species found on Hawaii, one from Asia, and one from here.  But while bats do best with bodies of fresh water nearby to provide an environment lush with insects (most species of bats consume huge quantities of mosquitoes, spiders, and moths), they, in general, do NOT fly over large bodies of salt water.  Those Hawaiian bats are quite a mystery!

She brought in a very small suitcase about $30K dollars worth of high tech gadgets which are the tools of her trade. One piece was a small very high frequency omni-directional microphone, which could detect bat calls used for echolocation and navigation. Those sounds are “down-shifted” by a computer to a range where human hearing can detect them, and the signals are analysed and presented in a graphic fashion on a computer screen. Different species of bats can be distinguished by the wave forms they send, and the purpose of differing signals is being ferreted out: hunting, navigation and distress calls all showing differences.

Some bat calls are audible in the human range, but they are “social” calls, used for signaling one another, sometimes to identify their group, and sometimes to signal territory boundaries. These calls are in the very lowest registers the bats can produce, and you might think of them as “grumbling” sounds in a human context.

She also demonstrated an infrared camera capable of seeing  the dark brown bats as they streak across the night sky. They appear as “meteors”, or more properly as “ufos”, if they are changing direction in mid-flight.

A large part of Kelly’s research entails netting, identifying, assessing, banding and releasing bats. This is tricky work work, as the nets involved are exceedingly delicate, and can be quite large to set up. A large net can extend up to 60 feet (18m).  The bats can often “see” and avoid them, so there’s some craft involved to effectively trap specimens.

Another fun fact: some bat mothers carry their young with them in flight to protect and nurture them. Please remember, they are mammals. The research is interested in sexing the bats, so bat nipples are important to evaluate in the trapped animals.

I wasn’t sure as I set out to this event if it would be worth the lost sleep, but was delighted with all I saw and learned. Bats are fascinating, and the store of knowledge about them has grown exponentially with the research and genetic tools now available to study them.

There’s bound to be some interest from our readers about the “antique” motor home we’ve bought. It’s a 1976 American Clipper class C with a big block Dodge V-8. It showed up on a Craig’s List search for Bellingham, WA, which said it was located on Orcas Island, was in good running order, and was available for $4500 or best offer.  A little further research revealed that it had been listed a few months earlier for $6500, so had been marked down, and sitting on the market for a while.

After a few minutes on the phone with Randy Davis, who was , I think, handling the sale for a third party, I began to think it might be just what we needed.  Randy plainly stated that it was clean, and very well maintained, but had been sitting for quite a while. I asked him if it would safely make it to the top of Mount Constitution, a very challenging climb. He said he was pretty sure it would do that, but recommended that I have the brakes looked at. As it happens, Randy manages Gordy’s Garage at East Sound, Orcas Island, and would be glad to take care of that detail for us if we decided to buy.

I bit my lower lip, took a deep breath and offered him $4000, and asked if we could close the deal by mail.  I also asked if he would he be able to keep the camper there for us until we got there in late July, and what would that cost? He said that price was fine,  no problem, and no charge to store it. Deal done. Somewhere in there we also discussed that he couldn’t be certain that everything worked perfectly, but that at the price I was paying I was getting a very good machine, overall.

About doing business with Randy by phone, and with others on Orcas Island that I subsequently have called with questions, there’s this:  The people on Orcas, so far, are VERY friendly, intelligent, thoughtful, humorous, helpful and honest.

So, meet “The Clipper”:

It is extremely clean inside and out, with light wear on the interior furnishings. While being almost 40 years old, it looks new-ish. It’s significantly bigger inside than our little LeSharo back home, and with a much more comfortable floor plan.

Initial issues included a minor plumbing glitch which fixed with a $1 fitting. Also, and more seriously, the old Dometic fridge was not, at first, getting cold. It didn’t have any ammonia smell (a sure sign of total failure), so I was hopeful. A bit of fiddling with the control contacts, a few jouncy miles of driving, and it suddenly sprang into life, so much so that we had frozen cantaloupe this morning for breakfast. Other items on the “to fix” list include a small fuel pump ($14) to make the 3 kW generator work again, and a new coach water pump ($60), to make the boon-docked water supply flow.

The engine was, at first, very temperamental. The gas was old, likely a crappy ethanol mix, and vehicles hate to sit too long unused. Fifteen gallons of hi-test, and about 5 miles of driving, and it smoothed out just fine. I’ve learned that it’s important to warm it up. It stoutly climbed all the way to our home atop Mount Constitution without a stutter or a cough.

The Clipper is proving to have been a really great plan; both comfortable and satisfying. I’m very grateful to Randy Davis for helping us obtain and get settled in it. If you’re ever in East Sound and need something done to your vehicle, look him up at Gordy’s Garage, and tell him I sent ya.

Here’s a gallery of The Clipper:

After the Mesa Verde hike, and the sumptuous drive north into Utah, we arrived on the evening of Ann’s birthday in Moab, almost too tired to move, or even feel hungry. The innkeeper at the Apache Motel, a lovely Mormon mom, was summoned to assist me by one of her three cherubic daughters. She arrived with an infant son in one arm. She checked us in, and suggested a vegetarian resturant a few blocks away, called The Peace Tree. Downtown Moab is quite a scene, with bikers, hikers, and other sundry transients, so we felt at home as passers-by among them. The Peace Tree proved excellent for the Walnut Apple and Quinoa salads, respectively.

We returned to the motel, donned earplugs against the noisy window air conditioner, and slept well enough.

Mindful that we were on a schedule to reach Orcas Isle, the following morning was a push-hard driving day. We arose at 6:30, partook of the motel coffee and buns, and set off. I regretted not having the time to linger at Arches National Park, but promised myself to return some day. We sped north and west, and blew past Boise, Idaho, to arrive in Ontario, Oregon at 6:30pm. A Chinese resturant earned our custom for dinner.

We’ve found on this trip that small town Chinese buffets have been a good choice for evening meals; certainly better than fast food drive thru meals, which neither of us care for. If you take small servings and aim for veggies, they are satisfying and reasonably healthy overall, with a few bites of guilty-pleasure foods mixed in, too. We dined at such a buffet back in Plainview, Texas.

Leaving Ontario, our next stop was to be Seattle, and our final preparations for Orcas Island and Mount Constitution…

When this project got started, this uprooting ourselves from the daily routine of our jobs and careers to volunteer at Moran State Park,  my first notion was that we should fly all the way there in our single engine airplane. Although I’ve been a pilot since the 70s,  and logged almost 2000 hours of private flight, this journey would have been the longest trip I’d ever have made on my own wings. I was also thinking it would be handy to have the use of the plane to explore the region during the weeks we were there.

So when it happened that the plan shifted to “fly-and-drive”, I was wondering how I would feel about it. The reasons were practical: our housing at Moran will be an antique Class C motor home we found through Craig’s List on Orcas Island. It’s waiting there for us now, but it wasn’t going to serve as a “get-around” vehicle. The park is on top of Mount Constitution, with a narrow track of switch-backs and some 2200 feet to climb up or down.  My friend, Bill Hawk suggested we borrow his older Audi station wagon, and use it for the time up there. Wheels, and damn nice ones, too! Thanks, Bill!!!

And here I am, blogging my way across Oregon and Washington this morning, as Ann manages the tiller.  So, how do I feel about it? Pretty wonderful, actually. The road has been beautiful, stimulating and thought-provoking in ways flying cannot be for me. It’s restful compared to flying, which is intense and demanding of attention, even in preparation for departure, and after landing too, when getting the plane properly settled and attended to kicks in.

Driving, we’ve been able to savor our passage across this beautiful countryside. I do look forward to getting back to our bird next October, but I’m not disappointed at all with the journey as it’s shaped up. Today we will take the advice of our friend, John Strickler, and try the coffee at Twede’s Cafe,  North Bend, Oregon,  where David Lynch filmed Kyle MacLachlan waxing lyrical over the cherry pie in the tv series, ‘Twin Peaks’.

“Damn, good food, Diane. That cherry pie is worth a stop.” – Special Agent Dale Cooper, ‘Twin Peaks’