A Bumpy Flight and a Familiar Face-15

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a picture that shows not only the chaos of our airplane, but how we felt after the flight from South Dakota to West Yellowstone, Montana.

We anticipated a three hour flight from South Dakota to Montana, which at the time seemed easy now that we had the perspective of five hour flights. We had a leisurely morning in South Dakota, and finally motivated to leave around 11am.

It was another hot day, but as usual we climbed up to 10,000 feet for cooler, smoother air. With terrain rising in elevation we failed to find cool smooth air and found ourselves bumping along on the mountain waves as we neared West Yellowstone. Along with turbulence, we were also fighting a 20 mph headwind which turned the three hour flight into a four and a half hour flight. Three out of the six of us lost our lunch, and half way through the flight we were all over it.

Once we landed things quickly turned around as we were greeted by our friend Jack Hart.

Since before Woodsen and I had kids we’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with Jack in the spring time on his annual trip up to Alaska. We had first met him at Ultima Thule lodge back when they did a yearly airplane geocache, and when that ended we still looked forward to seeing him at the Great Alaskan Aviation Gathering, then the next weekend at the Valdez Fly-in. As we added kids to our family he began to call himself “The Nanny” and could be found pushing our stroller, giving kids shoulder rides, and helping us wrangle children in Valdez and at the Aviation Gathering.

We had heard Jack talk about West Yellowstone, his wife Kellie, the shop Kellie owned, and all about his adventures flying around Yellowstone for years, now we had the chance to see it for ourselves.

After visiting with Jack for a bit and getting the airplane tied down, we picked out a camp spot in the campground next to the tarmac.

With camp set up, we headed to Jack and Kellie’s house for dinner. The kids found the bin of toys and had fun playing while Kellie made dinner and Woodsen, Jack and I went on a quick walk around the neighborhood.

Over dinner we made the plan for the next day which included Jack taking Woodsen for a flight in his plane, the kids feeding the bears a the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery center, touring Yellowstone park in Jack’s truck, then meeting Jack and Kellie in the park for a picnic dinner.

We headed back to camp excited about the day ahead.