Salmon Arm
One of the most exciting things about this trip already is that I never know where I'll be next. I don't know where I'll be spending the night, what I'll be seeing, who I'll meet. Salmon Arm 3 weeks ago to me was just another BC interior town along my route, one where I didn't have any relatives or friends, but one that could still be a potential stop over. I think Scott and I were pretty pleased to make it as far as Salmon Arm on our first day of mountain flying, so even if the weather hadn't forced us to stay, we likely would have stayed the night anyway. So, our first overnight stop in a place where we didn't know anyone, and it was still early in the day!
We were immediately greeted by friendly locals, all older pilots with a real love for flying. They took a lot of interest in the Aircoupe, asking all sorts of questions and walking around the plane to look it over. We filled up with fuel, had a nice picnic lunch, and then parked the coupe on the grass once we decided we'd be staying the night. But where we'd sleep was still to be determined.
John, the airport manager told us that we could rent the Flying Club's courtesy car for $15/day plus whatever gas we used, so we did. We threw all our stuff into the car, a 70's era giant orange boat, a Ford something or other, and drove into Salmon Arm to check out the town. We bought ice cream, went to the tourist info office and found out where to do some day hiking. As training for the WCT we decided to hike a nearby hill/mountain to a lookout with a view of the town where we had a picnic supper, canned food and other cheap groceries. We also took a walk along the longest freshwater pier in the world north of Kelowna, east of Kamloops and west of Revelstoke. (it wasn't spectacularly long).
In our driving around town, Scott noticed a sign at the Five Points Pentacostal Church advertising an evening of discussion about Dan Brown's novel "The Devinci Code". Since we had nothing to do and we were obsessed with spending as little money as possible, a free church event sounded like the perfect entertainment. I found it to be very insightful, even though I haven't read the book, and, after we left the church we drove downtown and noticed that "The Devinci Code" was playing at the local theatre so we caught the 9:30 show. Even though it meant spending some coin, we had just come out of this deep discussion of the novel, so it was the perfect time to see the movie. Or is Scott's case, the first half of the movie. I think he was having trouble staying awake towards the end.
Now it's almost midnight, and we still have no place to stay. Being the penny pinchers that we are, we decide to spend the night in our rented courtesy car. The front and back seats were both benches and super wide, so we just parked the car back at the church parking lot, wrapped ourselves up in whatever clothes we had, and tried to get some shut eye. In the morning we drove back out to the airport, returned the rental car, packed up the plane and checked the weather. It didn't look real hot, but it was clear enough to at least take off and get a first hand look at the clearance between the ceiling and the valleys. We thought we could at least make it to Merrit, only a short flight, we could spend the rest of the day there. But only 15min after taking off from Salmon Arm, the clouds looked pretty ugly. We were being pinched by layers of broken cumulous above and scattered cumulous below, so we turned that bird around and landed back at Salmon Arm.
This time we chose to save some more money by not renting the flying club's car and instead spent most of the day hanging out in the flying club lounge. An older member came to talk to us and he gave us the code to get in, inviting us to make ourselves at home. So we did, we watched tv, used he shower, made some coffee, and then after hitch hiking into town to get some groceries, we hitch hiked back again and cooked pasta in the coffee maker! Then we watched a movie on my MP3 player before going to sleep in the sketchy basement. We used old pleather couches and chairs for our beds and froze all night with no blankets or pillows. When I woke up I looked over at Scott and saw he had laid the hiking backpack on top of himself to stay warm. What a sight we were.
By this time the weather moving up off the coast was improving a lot, so we were able to fly to Merrit no problem and then after a quick fuel stop all the way on to Vancouver, landing at the Delta Air Park.
One of the most exciting things about this trip already is that I never know where I'll be next. I don't know where I'll be spending the night, what I'll be seeing, who I'll meet. Salmon Arm 3 weeks ago to me was just another BC interior town along my route, one where I didn't have any relatives or friends, but one that could still be a potential stop over. I think Scott and I were pretty pleased to make it as far as Salmon Arm on our first day of mountain flying, so even if the weather hadn't forced us to stay, we likely would have stayed the night anyway. So, our first overnight stop in a place where we didn't know anyone, and it was still early in the day!
We were immediately greeted by friendly locals, all older pilots with a real love for flying. They took a lot of interest in the Aircoupe, asking all sorts of questions and walking around the plane to look it over. We filled up with fuel, had a nice picnic lunch, and then parked the coupe on the grass once we decided we'd be staying the night. But where we'd sleep was still to be determined.
John, the airport manager told us that we could rent the Flying Club's courtesy car for $15/day plus whatever gas we used, so we did. We threw all our stuff into the car, a 70's era giant orange boat, a Ford something or other, and drove into Salmon Arm to check out the town. We bought ice cream, went to the tourist info office and found out where to do some day hiking. As training for the WCT we decided to hike a nearby hill/mountain to a lookout with a view of the town where we had a picnic supper, canned food and other cheap groceries. We also took a walk along the longest freshwater pier in the world north of Kelowna, east of Kamloops and west of Revelstoke. (it wasn't spectacularly long).
In our driving around town, Scott noticed a sign at the Five Points Pentacostal Church advertising an evening of discussion about Dan Brown's novel "The Devinci Code". Since we had nothing to do and we were obsessed with spending as little money as possible, a free church event sounded like the perfect entertainment. I found it to be very insightful, even though I haven't read the book, and, after we left the church we drove downtown and noticed that "The Devinci Code" was playing at the local theatre so we caught the 9:30 show. Even though it meant spending some coin, we had just come out of this deep discussion of the novel, so it was the perfect time to see the movie. Or is Scott's case, the first half of the movie. I think he was having trouble staying awake towards the end.
Now it's almost midnight, and we still have no place to stay. Being the penny pinchers that we are, we decide to spend the night in our rented courtesy car. The front and back seats were both benches and super wide, so we just parked the car back at the church parking lot, wrapped ourselves up in whatever clothes we had, and tried to get some shut eye. In the morning we drove back out to the airport, returned the rental car, packed up the plane and checked the weather. It didn't look real hot, but it was clear enough to at least take off and get a first hand look at the clearance between the ceiling and the valleys. We thought we could at least make it to Merrit, only a short flight, we could spend the rest of the day there. But only 15min after taking off from Salmon Arm, the clouds looked pretty ugly. We were being pinched by layers of broken cumulous above and scattered cumulous below, so we turned that bird around and landed back at Salmon Arm.
This time we chose to save some more money by not renting the flying club's car and instead spent most of the day hanging out in the flying club lounge. An older member came to talk to us and he gave us the code to get in, inviting us to make ourselves at home. So we did, we watched tv, used he shower, made some coffee, and then after hitch hiking into town to get some groceries, we hitch hiked back again and cooked pasta in the coffee maker! Then we watched a movie on my MP3 player before going to sleep in the sketchy basement. We used old pleather couches and chairs for our beds and froze all night with no blankets or pillows. When I woke up I looked over at Scott and saw he had laid the hiking backpack on top of himself to stay warm. What a sight we were.
By this time the weather moving up off the coast was improving a lot, so we were able to fly to Merrit no problem and then after a quick fuel stop all the way on to Vancouver, landing at the Delta Air Park.
posted by Ben at
4:07 PM
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