Chelan, cont

Des and I spent 4th of July weekend up in Chelan, Washington. Neither of us had been there before... what a cool place!

Launch is a 'butte' with a good road all the way up... it's paved about 1/3 of the way, then it's dirt. We took the Subaru Outback 'cause it gets twice the MPG of my truck, and it was able to go up and down no problem at all. There are several launches, and you can fly there in pretty much any wind direction!

Being on vacation, we were going up pretty early and doing late-morning flights, leaving the rest of the day for other activites. It's one of the only sites I've ever flown that can be thermal-soarable at launch, and still super-smooth and mellow out over the LZ.... which made it perfect for some aerobatic routines each day

On one side of launch is Lake Chelan, which is a beautiful blue lake... kind of reminded me of Tahoe... on the other side of launch there is a big river that runs through the valley. The 'soccer field' LZ we were using is in this valley, right next to the river. After flying you could take a dip in the river to cool off if you were so inclined (our dog, Jackson, a black lab-mix was very appreciative of that!).

After flying there's tons to do.... there are wineries all over the place, and my wife and I enjoy some vino from time-to-time... so we did some relaxing wine tasting while we were there. The town is small, but we found several funky little eaterys that we really enjoyed, and look forward to returning to...

Last but not least, all of the people there were super nice! A group of pilots there took us in and treated us like family! On top of having a great time, getting good flying, etc etc, we feel like now our extended flying family has grown a bit more, and that's always cool.

We're already hoping to do the same trip next year....

Here's a quick video from some of my flights there:

Did some most excellent relaxing and unwinding in Chelan this past weekend. What a cool place, and the people there are all awesome!

The flying was great, too! We did some mellow-morning flights, with some thermals, but still smooth conditions out over the river/LZ... perfect for some freestyle practice!