Lake Almanore Trip - Santa Rosa by Air

My buddy DJ worked with me back when I was a valet for the Delta King Hotel. It was during my hours of free time sitting in the valet booth that I first started seriously talking about flying. I had always been the kid who would look up as a plane flew by, imagining it was me up there flying the friendly skies. I never thought though that it would be possible that I’d become a pilot myself as that was something for rich people. But as I sat there in the valley booth on my laptop, bumming of some unlocked wireless internet connection, I started seeing prices for pilot’s license training that I thought I could afford. Just an FYI: If someone ever gives you a rough estimate about how much it costs to become a pilot, double it and you might be there – just a side note.

At this point in time, DJ was also talking about taking flight lessons as he apparently was also the kid that always thought it’d be cool to be a pilot (someone recently told me that is actually a common affliction among young kids, and that some just don’t ever quite grow up). Apparently I didn’t grow up as fast as DJ as I jumped the gun and started training on an expensive loan, while he has patently waited as a logical person should wait, until they actually had the money.

DJ’s grandpa has a cabin up on the shore of Lake Almanor just east of Chester CA. His house is nestled in a little semi private cove with a tired but functional boat dock sitting just off shore. It’s an idyllic mountain house that allows one to slip away from reality, the perfect retirement home really. The drive from Sacramento takes you up the California valley for a few hours through the slow highway 70, likely stuck behind a big rig, then through windy mountain roads for another hour to hour and a half depending on how aggressively you drive. It just so happens that there’s an airport in Chester that only takes an hour to get to by plane. One hour! It’s for this reason that DJ and I had often talked about flying up there for weekend with our girlfriends.

It’s an idea that stuck, but seems like it took forever to make happen. After almost four years as a pilot, it finally seemed like the trip was going to happen. DJ Chanel and I were going to fly up where we would meet some friends and DJ’s wife up at the cabin. Since we were planning this trip in what is normally mild California May weather, I wasn’t too concerned about rain or IFR cloudy conditions. The morning of the trip, we wake up to clear skies but with wind in the 20’s gusting 30 – 40, dramatic for sure! If the wind were blowing across the runway that would have been an easy deal breaker, but the wind was literally blowing directly down the runway making it much less dangerous. Additionally, the weather at the destination was supposed to be significantly milder than in Sacramento. The thing with wind is that once in the air, the only real concern is ensuring that you have plenty of fuel if you are heading into the wind, not a factor on this flight seeing as it would normally take only one hour. I may have chosen to go as I felt like the take-off wouldn’t really be that dramatic, but my passengers seemed fairly concerned about the wind, so I called it off.

The weather predictions that day said the wind was supposed to die down somewhat by evening, enough so that I knew I’d flow in similar conditions and could offer a little more confidence to my passengers. As friends were meeting at the cabin, DJ ended up leaving that morning by car with his wife while Chanel and I would try to make it up when we could by airplane. We ended up leaving around 7:00pm and arrived in Chester around 8:20, still a much quicker flight time than drive time, but since DJ left in the morning and got to the cabin around 2:00, we were effectively 6 hours slower by air than by car. And that’s the thing with flying a small airplane. Yes the trip time was less, but we still arrived much later than if we’d have driven. So why would anybody really want to fly a small plane if it’s unpredictable due to weather and sometimes barely faster once you factor in setting up the plane before flight, and setting up ground transportation on the other side. It really doesn’t make sense right? And, it will likely cost 5 times as much as the same trip in a car!

Taking all that into consideration, I would probably still take the plane if it were an option, let me try and convince you. The easy reason is that it’s beautiful. It’s different than flying in an airliner. You are lower to the earth, much more connected to the scenery, looking across the horizon at amazing mountain ranges in one direction, the patchwork quilt of farm country below you and the destination somewhere in front, just waiting to emerge in sight. On a more practical note, there’s no traffic, no brake lights, no cop cars looming around a freeway overpass, no people, just you. That makes it so peaceful. One of the best reasons though, is that it’s novel. You drive around all day every day making it one of the most normal things you can do. Getting on a plane to go somewhere instantly makes the trip more of an adventure, when you arrive, you really feel like you are on a special trip. But that’s not what really makes flying by small airplane special.

After spending two days at DJ’s cabin, Chanel and I hopped in the airplane again and flew to Santa Rosa, it took us an hour to get there. This is a drive that would normally; (according to Google maps) take 4.5 hours to drive. This is what’s so cool about a small airplane. You won’t find an airline flight from Chester to Santa Rosa. There’s no direct way to drive from Chester to Santa Rosa making the small personal airplane an amazing tool for making a crazy illogical trip like this work out.

See, what happened is that after we had already told DJ that we could spend a weekend at Lake Almanor, another good friend of ours invited us to their wedding all the way across the California Valley in Santa Rosa. While we could have done the trip in a car, it would have taken us so long that by the time we got to the wedding we would have been tired from the trip and not able to really enjoy the event. With the airplane, we were able to sleep in and get out of Almanor by mid day and still have plenty of time to check into a hotel, relax a little, and get dressed for the wedding with plenty of energy to contribute to the fun of the event.

And that’s the beauty of a small airplane. Making crazy illogical trips possible while also making the whole thing feel like an adventure, that’s aviation!

Just a side note, the trip cost from Sac to Chester, Chester to Santa Rosa, and back to Sac cost us just shy of $500 – in case any future pilots are trying to guess costs.