To Seward and back before dark

I was sleeping off a sandwich coma when Ryan woke me to say that if we were going to fly to Seward, we should get started. It was already about 4 p.m.

We dropped by Ryan's office to pick up his flight bag, and then headed for Merrill. I was still hungry so I pulled through Carl's Jr. for a 5-piecer. Ten minutes later we had the plane prepped and were sitting cheeks to cheeks in Ryan's Cessna 150.

Now, Cessna makes a lot of planes, but my understanding is that the 150 is the smallest. It rides with 90 horses, which means that the Corolla we drove to the plane outpowers Ryan's plane by about 50 percent. It's like being up there in a lawnmower.

We took off and fly south, flying over Cal Worthington and Ben Boeke, and I see good old Service High, which looked a lot crisper than I remembered. We cut across the Inlet and headed for the Kenai Peninsula and Skilak Lake.

Ryan fills me in on the controls, telling me, "If I have a heart attack, which probably won't happen, this is up, this is down, and this is left and right."Flying over Skilak and along the northern edges of the Harding Icefield was gorgeous, and Exit Glacier shone with a bright white intensity. Landing is Seward was "hairy," in Ryan's words, and when I have time I'll post the video from that roller coaster of a touchdown.
Making it back before dark was our top priority, so our time in Seward was limited to brisk walk and a quick pee.
Check back in with Bush Pilot for a post on the flight back and for that infamous hairy landing video.