benweir.com

Date: August 24, 2008
Origin: Lee Vining (O24)
Destination: Truckee (TRK), Nut Tree (VCB), Palo Alto (PAO)
Total time: (need to check my log book)

After spending Saturday exploring the Lee Vining and Mono Lake area and then camping in town for the night, we walked the 1.7 miles back to the airplane on Sunday morning. We weren't the only ones at the airport:

Ultralight with controls like a hang glider

For being such a little airport in the middle of nowhere there was a surprising amount of traffic. There was the Bonanza that landed right after us on Saturday morning, the ultralight, and also another plane that landed right after we took off Sunday. The takeoff took a decent amount of runway, nothing surprising at a 6800 foot high runway. The only major difference from a sea level takeoff was that I leaned the mixture out for best power before launching.

After departing we did a lazy, arcing pass over the lake to take in some of the sights that we had seen from the ground the day before. Here is the crater that we hiked through. We literally followed a trail in one side, walked around in the middle, and blazed our own trail out the other side. It is steep, loose rock, the kind you surf downhill rather than walk.

Panum Crater

More craters

Islands in Mono Lake

Mono Lake gets this distinct mirage-y look from its unique chemistry and trillions of brine shrimp living in it

I looked up information about the brine shrimp and various web sites estimated the population of the lake at 3-7 trillion shrimp in summer time. Hey, that's 1000 shrimp for every human on the planet! All the shrimp die off in the winter as the water cools down. But before they die, the females lay eggs that sink to the bottom of the lake and then hatch the next spring.

Next we continued northbound generally following US-395 up and then cutting across over the mountains near Markleeville to South Lake Tahoe. Then we followed the east shore of the lake up to Truckee.

Approaching Lake Tahoe

Fueling up at Truckee

The Truckee airport didn't have any courtesy car to take into town and the bus doesn't run on Sunday. We'd had our share of hitchhiking/walking the day before and so decided to just eat a snack, gas up the plane, and continue on to the Nut Tree airport in Vacaville.

I remember driving to the Nut Tree with my brother and mom back when I was much younger, probably late '80s or so. I remember going to the pumpkin patch and seeing the scarecrows. I also remember a shop that sold huge, exquisitely decorated gingerbread cookies. Well in 20 years things have changed a little bit. Now there's not much but a merry-go-round surrounded by a strip mall. Oh well, it was another airport to cross off my "visited" list and Susanne got a bikini top at the Gap for $2.50(!)

Then it was time to go home. From VCB to PAO I never got higher than 2500 feet and so got pretty nice views of the mothball fleet, the Carquinez and Zampa bridges, Richmond with all its oil refineries, Oakland, and the San Mateo Bridge. I almost never fly over this part of the bay and it was a nice treat to get these new views.

Over Berkeley, heading for downtown Oakland

Downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt

Lake Merritt

Norcal Approach asked if we wanted the Peninsula route or the Oakland route back to Palo Alto. It looked cloudy on the peninsula and so I opted for going back via Oakland. Oakland tower had us fly directly over the runway 29 numbers at 2000'. It must have been a slow day at the airport though because we didn't spot any jets landing nor were there any other planes on frequency.

Oakland Airport

Finally we crossed the San Mateo Bridge and the Sunken Ship before touching down at Palo Alto.