Halfway to the North Pole

The skies had cleared a bit on Tuesday but we still had some clouds.  Wednesday we awoke to frigid but clear skies.  It had gone from the 70s to the low 40s. We donned our winter coats, though we were warm and happy, many of the locals made comments, I think they were amused by us Floridians who thought this was winter.

Our plan was to tour the Leelanau Peninsula and the Old Mission Peninsula, both just North of Traverse City.  First stop was Leland or as the locals call it, Fishtown.  It’s a fishing village or it was, it’s now a tourist spot that sells the olde time look.  It has some quaint shanties, they look very nautical but my sense is the look is for the tourists.  It has a locally famous fish smoker.  We stopped by but at 10:00 AM smoked fish did not seem like what I wanted to snack on.  Like the other towns it’s cute but small.  I am not sure how these little towns survive on a few shops.  

Our time in town was productive.  We saw the fishing boats, the dam, the town bridge, a local painter and bought some chocolate covered cherries.  They were locally grown so we had to buy them.  The midge flies were out today but while they were annoying they were not as thick as the last trip.  

The next stop was just a few miles down the road, the Clay Cliffs Nature Area.  It is a short hike through the forest that leads to an overlook of the lake.  Before embarking on the hike we put on our boots.  This was a great decision.  While the trail was well marked, it had several areas of mud.  

A few thoughts on the lake.  When looking out over the waters, it’s hard to think of it as a lake, it’s so vast.  That said, the smell tells you that you aren’t at the ocean.  The ocean or even a sea has a distinctive salty smell and feel.   The lake on the other hand smells like a glass of water, while the visual is impressive, you feel like you’re missing something.  The overlook is good and we enjoyed the hike.

Leelanau State Park was the next destination.  It’s home to the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.  The park is on the Northern tip of the peninsula and back in the day it was likely important for mariners to avoid the land. These days it’s a tourist attraction.  While the lakes are really big, the lighthouses are not.  

This one is barely 4 stories and with the elevation it has over the lake, it is visible for only 14 to 16 miles.  I guess that is enough on the lake.  We took a stroll down by the lake, took a bunch of pictures and ogled the ice cream at the gift shop.  In the end I passed on the ice cream but it did look really good.  It was a local brand so I felt a certain responsibility to give it a try.  Don't worry, I eventually fot the ice cream.

We headed South from the park, it was really the only choice as I was not up for a swim.  Northport was next.  We strolled  downtown and bought some snacks, again there is not much to Northport.  One thing I noticed is each of these towns have their own post office, I don’t get it, at home it’s like one location per 100,000 people.  They have one for 505 people.

While the post office thing had me steamed, I was soon distracted by our next stop, the 45th parallel.  Yes, that imaginary line cuts right through the peninsula. There is a tiny park near it, rear a pull out, and a sign a few hundred feet down the road purportedly on the line.  Crossing this line means you are closer to the North Pole than the equator. We pulled over and I pulled out the GPS.  

My iPhone’s GPS said we were not exactly on the line. GPS is typically good within a few feet so it was confusing why it showed almost a 100’ error. We pondered this for a bit but like the post office I was soon distracted by our next stop, Sutton Bay, our third small town today.

Sutton Bay has a cool store selling a plethora of art, yard art and much more. We adopted a cool metal flower covered flamingo to commemorate the trip.  She will likely live on our porch.  We also walked downtown, like Frankfort they had a tiny theatre.  We also bought some fudge just to check the local quality vs. our past experience at Mackinack and Whitefish Point.  Post tasting verdict was meh.  Good fudge but third place in the Michigan Fudge wars.

Our final stop was the North tip of Mission point peninsula to see the lighthouse.  Along our drive we had been seeing the famed cherry orchards.  Unlike the first two days with cloudy skies, today the orchards looked much brighter and maybe the extra days had moved us to peak bloom.  They were pretty but a bit disappointing.  We have fond memories of viewing the cherry blossoms in Japan. Hana Mi, or flower watching is an important part of the culture.

These Michigan trees are all small.  It’s on purpose though, the dwarf varieties produce more fruit per acre and are easier and safer to harvest.  They are beautiful but they lack a certain wow factor.  Regardless, we made appropriate comments as each orchard came into view.  Maybe we are just spoiled.

This peninsula is shorter than the Leelanau and we soon reached the park.  I was hoping we would cross the 45th again but the peninsula came up short by about 3,000’ feet.  This peninsula also had a lighthouse and it too was diminutive.  Short or not, we still were going to take a look.  We took a walk on the beach, took some selfies and noted that the flies were getting thicker.  Walking back to the car we saw that the spiders were feasting tonight.  

Sightseeing was going well and it was time to start planning our return.  The Friday weather had looked terrible all week and while I was getting closer to formulating our plan, it looked like this everlasting front from Texas to Pennsylvania was not going anywhere and we would need to find a way through.  I started making a list of various routes and stops and pretty much determined that the final plan would likely not finalize until Friday morning.

Big Piles of Sand

 

The weather Tuesday was supposed to be rainy all day.  Luckily the forecasts have been really off.  Yesterday this was not a positive feature but today we were happy that they were wrong.  We awoke to the last of the showers pushing through.  We headed South to Inspiration Point, just South of Arcadia, MI.  The name would imply a romantic setting and possibly with the right weather it might have been so.

As we worked our way South and West the skies went from dark to blue and dark again.  It was supposed to be warm today but Michigan warm is not Florida warm and luckily we had brought our jackets.  When we arrived, the rain had stopped but the clouds still lingered.  The Vista like views were quite truncated but it still was charming.  Charming but cold and windy, it was blowing 20 knots off the lake and was a chilly 56.

They have a nice observation platform by the parking lot and stairs leading up to an upper platform.  I imagine the views are stunning on a clear day but we only had the partial view which was still nice.  Our next stop was Frankfort.  We visited the local arts center, basically an art gallery with traveling exhibits.  For a town of 1,300 people, it was an impressive facility.  After culturing ourselves we headed to the lake shore.  

Frankfort is best known for the Frankfort North Pier Lighthouse, pictured above.  We parked by the beach and walked out along a long jetty into Lake Michigan.  The wind was blowing and in places the waves were breaking onto the jetty but at least the skies had begun to clear.   After our jetty trek we walked downtown Frankfort.  The town is quaint and it is likely packed during the season.  Our trip is pre-season and many businesses were not yet open.  

I had planned to stop for some fudge but being pre-season, the fudge store was not opening for another 30 minutes.  On the positive side, parking was easy.  Thwarted in my quest for fudge, we headed North to Empire, home of the Robert H. Manning Memorial Lighthouse.  The light is still in use but as lighthouses go it was a bit lacking in stature.  The views from the beach were nice though, we stayed just a few minutes and then stopped by the park visitor center before heading into the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park.

We started with the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.  It had some descent overlooks and dunes to scale.  We still had the stiff breeze with the accompanying blowing sand but it was a good view.  After the loop we stopped by the main dune climb. It is a long way up and after the climb to the first summit, you then need to trek a few miles to get a lake view.  We did the big climb but passed on the arduous march.  

700 miles of blue skies and 200 miles of rain

 

It all started so easy.  We were flying to Traverse City, Michigan.  It is 885 miles and with the forecast tail winds would only be 4.6 hours in the air.  In theory the flight can be done easily with one stop but for a variety of reasons which will soon become obvious, I planned two.

According to the forecast the weather was good and as long as we arrived before 3 PM we should have VFR weather the entire trip.  We fired up right on plan at 08:30 and were quickly airborne. Our first stop was Pickens, SC.   This first stop was mostly about comfort as the ideal middle point did not have any value fuel stops and this let us take the majority of our gas at stop 2 where they had a great deal on gas.

As planned the arrival was good VFR.  Entering downwind, there was a plane landing ahead of us.  I asked if he was heading to self-serve and he was as well.  I asked if he could pull up enough so we both could fuel and he did a great job for us.  While he fueled, we freshened up and by the time we returned he was done and had moved the hose to my plane.  We thanked him and he headed out while we fueled.

My second stop was strategic.  Yes there was really cheap fuel in Northern Indiana, but I also had a sense that the Traverse city arrival might not be great VFR.  Stopping an hour short meant we would have hours of reserve and would be fresher having just taken a break. 

The weather still looked good as we departed Pickens and headed towards the mountains.  With the strong wings from the Southeast, I was concerned with turbulence but we climbed to 8,000’ in smooth air.  We had a bit of light turbulence over the mountains but overall a smooth ride and no waves.

I had one other concern, Cincinnati. We would be just outside the class B as we passed to the East.  Our experience around Charlotte is that they like to re-route you.  As we approached, I kept waiting to get re-routed but somehow they let us go on our merry way.  As we sailed by, I noticed that our route was overflying a lot of states for such a simple trip.  We crossed ten, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

Clear of airspace my focus was back on the weather.  The forecast said we should be able to slide into Traverse City ahead of the bad weather.  As we departed Georgia there were severe storms over Missouri and Iowa.  There was light rain over Illinois.  It looked like we could easily stay ahead of the storms.  On the way to fuel at Angola, Indiana we watched a line of severe storms organize and begin to sweep East towards our stop.  We were well ahead of this weather and we landed in clear skies.

While our fuel stop was good, by the time we approached Angola, the light rain had organized over lake Michigan, intensified and began heading toward Traverse city.   After a quick refuel, we had full tanks and took a look at the radar.  It looked iffy.  The storms that had looked like they would slide North were sliding towards Traverse City.  I thought about staying in Angola but I had severe storms bearing down on us from the East and I figured it would be better to head further North and see what happened.

Watching the datalink radar during our departure showed that the storms had arrived and we were not going direct into Traverse City. I had a plan B though,  Cadillac, Mi.  It was VFR, just 30 miles South of our goal and the first line of storms had slid North.  We updated our destination with ATC and with a solid out, we studied the storms some more.  The ADS B/XM feed was pretty useless other than to show the line of severe precipitation.

Everything else was a blob of green, yellow and red with no apparent safe route.  We started down for Cadillac and were cleared to 4,000'.  This was the MVA for Cadillac to Traverse City. I wanted to be lower but this is the best they could do.  The onboard radar works best inside of 60 milesso once we were 30 miles from Cadillac I could paint the entire route to Traverse City. There were some strong cells running North to South that started East of the field and they had a tail that headed West for a few miles.

I updated ATC that we wanted to attempt Traverse and gave them our plan.  ATC confirmed their radar matched ours and cleared us back to our original destination.   About 10 miles South of Cadillac we made a hard turn West  to get around the storms at the South end of the line.  We were in and out of the bases and the ride was surprisingly good with only light turbulence though CC swears it was bumpy.  The XM was still mostly useless as the storms were moving fast and the data was too old to be of value but the onboard radar was doing a great job. 

Once on the back side of the line the radar showed mostly green with a bit of yellow and spots of red.  The controllers were very accommodating and we made minor deviations to avoid the precipitation.  Though we spent a good amount of time in the clouds, we had almost no precipitation and the rain we did encounter was just a bit of water streaming along the windshield.

After getting behind the line and avoiding the areas of heavier precipitation, the final for runway 10 looked clear.  We were behind an airliner on his second attempt.  He had tried to land through the severe precip and had gone around.  

We were turned direct  BEAAR and were cleared for the 10 approach straight in.  I had studied the approaches before departure and briefed the plate before we worked our way around the weather so it was pretty easy.   We joined at BEAAR and and broke out just past the FAF.  The runway was wet and we had a really smooth touchdown.  We rolled a bit as I wanted to be careful on the slick surface.

While it had been dry all the way in, once we landed the rain started as we pulled into parking.  The FBO brought the car to the plane and we loaded up.  We had bouts of light rain for the next two hours and then the rain stopped for a bit, it was time to sightsee. We drove into the city and I use that term loosely to see Clinch Park.  The park sits on the North edge of downtown on the lake.  It had stopped raining but it was pretty foggy.  We went for a nice walk and watched the fog start to lift.  There were some midge flies out but not too bad.  We did find some areas with swarms that we avoided.

We ended up at Don’s Drive in, a classic local place for classic burgers, dogs and fried food.  While less than healthy it was a tasty treat.

Overall it was an interesting flight.  When we started, I pretty much thought we would be diverting.  I did in fact divert to Cadillac but as the weather unfolded we diverted again to Traverse City.  Onboard radar made the difference.  I had considered getting below the clouds, cancelling and working my way in VFR.   

The controller had told me the MVA was 4,000’ for much of the area.  The VFR chart shows an MEF of 2,700’. This only gives you 100’ of clearance over the obstacles.  There are a bunch of tall towers out there and even with our excellent terrain awareness, I did not want to be scud running and caught between a storm and a tower.

Since VFR was not an option and datalink is not fast enough to use for avoidance, without being able to visually avoid the bad stuff, I would not have ventured through the area without the radar.

We Got Really Lucky

I generally say we make our own luck when it come to the weather.  We often adjust our flights to pick the best weather.  This trip our days were pretty set so it was really a go or no go decision.  I had expected to deal with some weather but in the end we got really lucky.  

Our original plan was to head up to Greenville on Wednesday.  While the afternoon turned out nicely, we would have had to work a bit to make it home.  Also our return Sunday we would have returned a bit earlier so would have had lower ceilings.

Our ride from Greenville to DC on Friday also nicely slid between two systems, if we had gone earlier or later, we would have had to work for it.  Finally if we had come back Saturuday, we would have had to contend with Significant weather that stretched from Savannah to Tallahassee.  

Sunday morning our Uber, I mean Sam came and picked us up to take us back to Manassas.  She was a bit late but she did get CC flowers and candy for Mothers day so we let it slide.  Sunday traffic was light and we were soon at the airport.  The fees and gas at HEF are higher than I like but they have great service and the plane was literally at the front door.

Preflight went well and we loaded up and then fired up.  Having been before I knew to file the ARSENAL FIVE DEPARTURE with the GVE transition and that’s what we got with a restriction to stop climbing at 2,000’.  I have heard you can wait a while to get released at HEF but we have had good luck and it just took a minute.  

On departure we climbed to 800, started our turn and checked in with departure.  We got 3.000’ and direct destination, so much for the departure.  We were not heading home, I planned a fuel stop in Georgia so we could top off as the weather at home was IFR.  We also had some headwinds which made the trip longer.  When I planned it the forecast was for 25 knots on the nose and we had around 10 most of the way so I was pretty happy with that.

We chugged along around 175 ground speed and enjoyed mostly clear skies with with only occasional light turbulence.  Our fuel stop was Wright Army Airfield, KLHW or also called MidCoast Regional Airport.  It is a dual use field that has nice facilities and typically cheaper gas.  It is nestled amongst the 3005 restricted areas and has a tower which is closed on weekends and holidays.

When I checked in with Jacksonville center I asked about the 3005 areas and Charlie was hot while Delta was cold.  Since we could not go direct I asked for and got direct SAV direct destination.  Checking in with Savannah we refined that with SAV FLATN direct.  This route hooked us around the little Southern protrusion from 3005C.  Because of the restricted airspace there are no approaches to 24R which we were using but the weather was VFR.

There were a few clouds with bases around 3,000’ so we stayed IFR until we got below them.  Then I cancelled IFR which gave us a bit more flexibility.  The airport was visible and Savannah said goodby, squawk VRF.  Had a nice arrival and taxied over to self serve.  My only complaint is that the pump is not fast, it’s not slow but faster would be better.

We filled the tanks, drained ours and were soon back in the air.  It’s a quick flight back home and we settled in at 6,000’.  The clouds started to fill in and I briefed the GPS 32 arrival.  There was a notam so I used the adjusted minimums of 291’ and requested direct JEVAG, the initial for the approach.

The field was 800’ and everything was clicking along.  We had a much slower plane ahead that the controller vectored us around.  I was a bit concerned for the guy, the weather South of the field was bad with storms from the coast to Palatka.  They were moving East cutting off his flight plan.  He was VFR only and the weather ahead was a mix of VFR and IFR.

The controller did a good job helping him and we threw in a few suggestions based upon our weather displays.  As we were getting vectors for the approach I told the controller I would like to stay in close.  He did a good job vectoring me in tight and with everything set up, he announced the field had just gone VFR with ceiling 1,400’.  I could have just gone in VFR but we were only a mile from joining the approach so we stayed IFR.

We were solid crossing the FAF but broke out at 1,500’ with good visibility below.  Made another nice landing and soon had the plane in the hangar where I began the oil change process.  I remembered to take my oil samples, taping them to the drain hoses and buckets worked and even I couldn’t mess that up.  With the oil drained and samples collected we headed home.  I completed the oil change Monday, the filters looked clean when cut open and the process went smoothly.