Flying with Dwayne always ends up being stressful... It is a good "learning experience" but still stressful. We were going up to drop Lee off with his daughter, and Dwayne was doing a little instruction with a guy who has a little homebuilt tailwheel plane.

NOTHING beats the view... As we headed out of here, following the bright blue chickaloon river, i pointed the nose in the direction we usually fly, straight up the river.
But Dwayne wanted to show us an airplane wreck. So he pointed me in the direction of a canyon that led to a ridge much higher than our cruising altitude.
As we discussed ridge crossing theory, I pulled the nose up and climbed to a safe altitude to cross the ridge. I love flying a plane that has enough power to get up over the mountains.
We popped over a few ridges and found two airplanes and a camping party on the airstrip where Dwayne likes to land the super cub.

A little ways further was the wrecked airplane. Now its a 150 and the ground is at least 4,000 ft. Those of you who know aviation are sitting there amazed that a 150 could actually get that high. It really had problems, which caused the accident. It ran into one of the ridges we were hopping over at 8,000 or so feet. I had never seen a plane wreck in person before. It was a little sobering to see the fuselage sitting 50 feet away from the wings, which sat next to each other.

We finished that bit and went on our way. When we got up closer to Fairbanks, we started looking at an incredible spread of mountains. Lee's wife say's that its just like reading national geographic, but the pages are bigger.
We pulled up to 10,000 feet and aimed toward a low spot in the mountain range. cruising above glaciers and in between mountains, seriously? who doesnt want to be a pilot? Especially in Alaska!

Aaron flew on the way back. He was a huge help to have on the way, kind of a co-pilot in the backseat. So on the way back, I sat back and took a nap when he flew. I woke up when we got back to the Chickaloon valley. Mostly because we started pulling 60+ degree banks to soar down the canyons. And by soar down, I mean we had one wing sticking down in the canyon, and the other one out above us.

All of this really made me think of the passage in Romans 1:18-21. For all practical purposes, I am going to just copy the text here :)

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.


God's invisible qualities are definitely visible in the scenery of Alaska. His eternal power is defined in the glaciers that slowly rip the rocks out from under them. Yet he could halt the masses of ice with just a thought. His divine nature is visible in the bright white snow contrasting with the deep blue pools of glacial waters, falling from rugged black peaks, too steep for snow to cling to them.