Flying from Whitehorse back to Phoenix
I’m in a campground at Idaho Falls, Idaho, as I write this, halfway through an Adventure that truly has me overwhelmed. There will probably not be an update until I get home, as I’m speed-touring a 3,200-mile route home with my new motorhome. I’m dying to tell you about flightseeing over the Grand Canyon, and hiking into Bryce Canyon, but first, Day 1, the drive and flights to Phoenix on Thursday. I enjoyed the last trip through Skagway so much that I decided to take that route again.
The Venus mill along Windy Arm is a great site to say “goodbye” to the Yukon with.
At 09:50 a.m. (10 minutes early), the Wings of Alaska Cessna 207 was airborne from Skagway and within a few minutes we were over the most dramatic part of Taiya Inlet.
I’d sure like to have a closer look at this shipwreck I spotted north of Haines in Taiyasanka Harbor – but it’s boat access only.
Fort William H. Seward at Haines is a great photo subject from the air or the ground.
The Davidson Glacier. I sat on the opposite side of the plane to what I had that last trip, offering quite a different view.
The people on the large Allen Marine whalewatching boat at the upper left got very lucky just a second before I took this shot, when a humpback whale surfaced right beside the boat.
Landing at Juneau at 10:30.
The 3 hour stop in Juneau really dragged – I wanted to get to Phoenix! But I killed time by looking more closely at some of the aviation history displays…
… and, of course, watching airplanes. I hadn’t seen a Boeing 737 combi in a very long time. Carrying freight forward and passengers aft, this one had arrived from Petersburg and was now headed for Wrangell.
We were over a cloud layer for most of the flight to Seattle, and this shot along Vancouver Island was one of the few I got.
The Olympic Peninsula, with the sandbars of Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge at the lower right.
A lot of frozen fish came off our flight in Seattle – great souvenirs for some lucky tourists.
We started taxiing for the flight to Phoenix just before 6:00 pm. I love the Alaska Airlines regionals that have been painted in college football colours.
Mount St. Helens.
We flew directly over the incredibly destructive wildfires burning in eastern Washington.
At 10:00, I got to my room at the Aloft Phoenix Airport Hotel. I went to the lounge for one beer, and then crashed, pumped to get the real adventure started. I had an appointment at 08:00 Friday to get the keys to my new rig 🙂
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