Labor Day weekend trip to Canada with my wife and her mother. We departed Linden (notice the deer by the runway at high noon) and flew directly to Gatineau CYND just outside Ottawa in my Mooney M20J 201. We were met by Yves and his wife.
Remember my return from my previous Canada trip where Yves invited me to fly his wing at Oshkosh while I coincidentally was flying over his house? Well, at Oshkosh, Yves and his friend Patrick invited me to their Casey camping fly in trip Labor Day weekend so I decided to go. We got dinner with Yves and Ned in a fantastic restaurant and were served by Yves lovely daughter.
In the morning the weather wasn't too great so we delayed a bit. But early in the afternoon we set off to Casey in formation down low to stay below the cloud deck. It was a pretty turbulent day and combined with the low altitude, it just was not practical to maintain tight formation so we kept it loose.
Casey is an abandoned Military airport in the middle of the Canadian wilderness northeast of Ottawa, northwest of Montreal. Once a year, the Canadians have a big get together by flying into this well-paved runway in the middle of nowhere. A few spend the night camping but most arrive as a day trip on the Saturday or Sunday for the barbecue event.
We found wild blueberries and my mother in-law especially enjoyed collecting them. We watched the airplanes arrive by both land and water. Several seaplanes landed on the river beside the airport. There is no cell signal, phone service, electrical power, or anything out there. Only what you bring.
So we enjoyed a night of camping and the barbecue and headed out the next day. The return flight required us to get above the cloud deck so I climbed IFR in uncontrolled airspace on my own until I got high enough to be able to reach flight service and file a return flight plan in the air. I couldn't file on the ground due to the lack of communications. Luckily I had already made my US customs arrangements in advance and stuck to my time slot so those remained active.
A quick flight back to Albany and we cleared customs and then onward to Linden to conclude the exciting 3 day trip.
27 сен 2024
