Day 6 - We Made It To PEI!

We had a bit of fun getting to the airport this morning.  We thought initially that we would just get a taxi from the hotel, but when we talked to Pat & Lon they said that cars would be available to take us to the airport starting at 6:30.  We decided to head down at about 6:15 to make sure we'd get a ride and found people leaving already!  We quickly got in with another club member who had rented a car yesterday and got going.  The only problem was... none of us knew the area and none of us had brought a map!  We ended up going about 20 minutes in the opposite direction of where we needed to be going!  After getting turned around, we finally made it to the airport about 30 minutes later than we had hoped.  We couldn't have asked for a better flying day though, it was absolutely beautiful! 

It was fun flying over all the fields all lined up so perfectly.

Figured I would throw in another picture of us flying.  It's been nice to have so much time together.

We were excited to fly over Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park in Maine.  Lennard hiked this mountain when he was younger and thought it was pretty neat to see it from the air.  It was interesting flying over US airspace too!  Glad they finally acknowledged us... we really didn't want any visitors flying up beside us!

As we were coming in to Fredericton, Lon & Pat and Wayne & Linda were ahead of us, so we decided to detour and do a quick flight over the farm where Lennard grew up.  It's a little shocking how little time it took to fly over the farm and then be back in Fredericton when it's a 45 minute drive!  I loved being able to see the farm from the air.  We are hoping to go back sometime this week and get a few more pictures at a lower altitude.

I loved seeing how excited Lennard got flying over his old stomping grounds.  As soon as we crossed the border in to New Brunswick I pretty much put the maps away and Lennard pointed out every spot as we flew over it.  This is the Saint John River.

Coming in to land at the Fredericton airport.  Definitely a huge accomplishment for Lennard.  He's wanted to fly home ever since he got his pilot's license.  It felt so good to be back in Fredericton... even if it was only for a few hours.

We made it to Fredericton just in time to have Ben & Marni pick us up at the airport and get to church before it let out.  We were able to see so many of our wonderful friends.  Seriously makes me miss our ward family here.  We love Ben & Marni so much.  They are such an amazing couple. 

We didn't get pictures of everyone, but we managed to get one with the Moeller family before we left.  Carl & Nicole lived with us for a while when they were expecting their oldest... it's hard to believe their kids have grown up so much!

We had a nice lunch at the Diplomat.  Lennard wasn't excited at all (could hardly get him to stand still for the picture before he raced in!)  We were both starving as we hadn't managed to get breakfast, so getting a buffet lunch at the Dip hit the spot.  It also gave us a chance to visit with Ben & Marni a bit more.  

Unfortunately, we had to get going before too much longer, so they took us back to the airport, checked out the plane and then we took off for our final destination of Charlottetown, PEI.  It was fun to be able to see both sides of the island at once!

Here's the start of the Confederation Bridge!  It was tricky to get a good picture when we were up so high, but hopefully we'll get more this week.

Here's a bit of PEI.  I love it!!!

Coming in to Charlottetown.

We got in later than most, so it wasn't busy when we came in to land (which was nice!).  They were so amazing welcoming us to Charlottetown.  Everyone was so pleasant.  As soon as we landed, there was a guy directing us towards the fueling station, then another guy took over and got us to the pumps.  Immediately everyone was welcoming us, checking out the plane and asking us how the flight was.  Once we were fueled up, another guy directed us to where they wanted us to tie down.  Another guy was right there with a van to take us from the plane with our luggage to meet the shuttle to the airport.  It was very impressive!

I took a quick shot of the the terminal as we were taxiing past.

Here we are, all tied down and ready to head to the hotel.  It is fun seeing all the other planes.  We ended up missing the open house for the public, but at least we are here!

The hotel is great.  We had a bit of a maze to go through to actually find our room, but now that we know where it is, it's not too bad.  There was a big opening banquet last night.  They had a wonderful dinner of either meat lasagne or seafood lasagne, salad, bread and desserts.  Lennard says it definitely beats the opening 'banquet' in Whitehorse of pizza!  They had a slideshow going of pictures that have been taken so far and then John Lovelace made a bit of speech thanking all the sponsors, etc.  It was a nice evening, although we were very ready for bed by the time we got there.  

More stats... 3 hours 40 minutes flying time.  551 nautical miles.  2 more cities.  Made it to our end goal!  

Day Five - Gatineau

This was breakfast with everyone deciding whether they would go to Gatineau or continue on to PEI.  We decided that we had to pay for the hotel room anyway, so we might as well enjoy a day seeing things that we've never seen before.

We were excited to see beautiful blue skies this morning!  Everyone was looking forward to getting going and it was a bit busy getting all the planes out.  We had about 3 planes ahead of us waiting and at least that many behind us.  

Because of all the rain the last couple days, everything was soaking wet.  We put the canopy cover in a plastic bag so that we could dry it off when we got to Gatineau, wiped off the canopy before we opened it so no water got into the instruments, etc.  I thought we'd done pretty good.  My seat was a bit damp, so I put my jacket down to sit on.  We got all strapped in and while Lennard was doing the run up, I asked if I should open my vent.  Now, there is more of a story to the whole vent thing, but I'm not going to tell it here... needless to say, Lennard couldn't stop laughing when I opened the vent and got sprayed with water that had been sitting in it!  Thankfully I had a paper towel ready because of hearing about this possibility... I just didn't realize just how much water there would be!  My pant leg was pretty wet for most of the trip because of it!

I thought it was neat seeing the sun come through the clouds.  We had great weather with about a 30 knot tailwind for most of it. 

This is the town of Espanola as we were flying over it.  

About 80 miles out of Gatineau, it clouded in and we had to drop down from 5500 feet to 2500 feet to get under them.  It got a bit bumpy, but the biggest issue was that we couldn't raise Montreal Center on the radio to get a transponder code so we could enter their control zone!  After about a dozen tries, we finally got them to acknowledge us.  It was a bit nerve wracking, but we made it!

As we were coming in to land there were three other planes before us and about five behind us, so they were pretty busy in the control tower!  

They had us tie down just beside the taxi way and then shuttled us and our luggage over to the terminal building.  We were able to store our luggage in the FBO office while we went exploring.

As we were about to get into the shuttle, we looked up and saw some parachuters coming down!  There were four of them, two had just landed when I took this picture.

We walked over to the Vintage Wings Museum and checked it out for about 45 minutes.  It was pretty hot in the building and we wanted to get to our hotel so we headed back to the terminal to see if our ride was there yet.  

Here's Lennard with his dream plane.... sorry, sweetheart... keep dreaming!

There was quite a long wait for the van to the hotel, so we got a taxi with two other couples and headed off.  Our taxi driver thought he would take advantage of us and only drove 80km/hr all the way there.  Not very impressed.

We stopped at MacDonald's to grab some lunch and then we flagged a taxi down and headed to Parliament Hill with Wayne & Linda.  Pat & Lon made it just in time to go on the tour with us through the Parliament buildings.

I loved being able to be on Parliament Hill.  I wish we could have spent LOTS more time, but it was fun to see what we did.  When we went to get tickets to go on a tour, they told us that there were no more English tours being given... so we signed up for the French tour!  We figured it was more important to actually get to see inside, so if we didn't understand anything it would still be worth it.  We all had to go through security to get in to the building.  

I took lots of pictures and these are only a few, but there are still lots in this post!  

There are so many beautiful stained glass windows.

The architecture was amazing.  So many details that it was hard to know what to look at.

My favorite was the library (of course).  So beautiful!

I could have spent all afternoon in this room alone!

The Senate.

After the tour, we got to go up the Peace Tower.  On the ride up the elevator we could see the bells that ring every 15 minutes.  At the top we were able to look out and see all over Ottawa and Gatineau. This is the clock that is at the top of the tower!  We were right below it!

Here we are!  We are still alive!

This was in the Memorial Chapel.  This is where they have the books with all those who have died in the service of our country.  We found out that if we come on April 22nd the page with Lennard's grandpa would be shown.

This was over in the tourist center.  Had to have the typical Canadian picture!

After visiting Parliament Hill, we went to the Canadian War Museum.  It was huge.  I was amazed at how large it was and how nicely it was put together.  So much to look at and learn.

This little biplane was made out of shell casings.

These were all kinds of art that was put on airplanes during the war.  

After getting back to the hotel, we were both tired so we decided to go grab some dinner and then have an early night.  We talked with the kids for a bit, finished up all the paperwork for the plane and I blogged!  Now we're heading to bed so we can be up at 5:30 again tomorrow morning for our next leg of the adventure! 

Day 5 Stats:  Just over 2 hours of flying.  296 nautical miles.  One more city.  Getting closer to our end goal of making it to Charlottetown, PEI!

Day 4 - Weathered Out!

We got up nice and early this morning, got packed up, had breakfast and made sure we were ready to get on the one and only bus available back to the airport.  We all piled in, headed to the airport and then waited.  The weather was not nice, but there was a slight chance that it might improve in a few hours.

In the mean time, this was the scene... everyone sitting around the airport waiting to see what the weather would do.  

It was entertaining to watch everyone with all their iPads and iPhones trying to flight plan possible routes.  

The rain came down really hard off and on.  

Here's Lon after getting caught out in the rain... yup... he's wringing out his jacket!

Finally, after a number of weather briefings, it was decided that the weather was just getting worse and it would be smart to just wait it out here in Elliot Lake.  Then came the task of finding hotel rooms for everyone!  We were supposed to be in Gatineau tonight, so everyone had hotel rooms booked there.  The Century Flight staff worked hard and finally found enough rooms for everyone here and move our hotel rooms in Gatineau to tomorrow night.  Thankfully we were able to get a room back at the same hotel we were in last night.

We took a group photo while we were waiting at the airport. There are about 35 planes here. I've heard there are about 15 planes already in Gatineau and others joining in in PEI. 

We were very glad when they put on a complimentary bbq for lunch. 

Lennard wasn't very happy that I took his picture, but I had to find something to do with all the hours we sat around today!

Finally at about 1:40 the buses came to take us to our various hotels.  We all got loaded up and we were looking forward to relaxing for a bit.

Unfortunately, the hotel's check-in time was 3:00 and they would NOT budge.  Even when the rooms were ready... they wouldn't let us in until 3:00.  Everyone found a chair and hung out for another hour!  Little frustrating!  

At least we had a beautiful view to look at while we were waiting!

Once we got in to our room, we had a bit of a nap and got all our electronics charging.  We then met up with about 20 others for dinner.  It was a lot of fun sitting and visiting with everyone.  We were at the restaurant for two hours and laughed a lot.  You can definitely get some interesting stories going when there are a bunch of pilots together!

The plan for tomorrow... hopefully get as far as Gatineau, Quebec... and then see what happens!  It looks like the weather won't let us get too much farther, but we'll just have to play it by ear.  Hope we can get out of here tomorrow morning!