Another Great Weekend!
As you can tell from the pictures folks have posted, this turned out to be one of the best weekends we?ve had yet out at the Big Bend - perfect weather, great company, good flying, and lots of healthy exercise! From airplanes to horses to bicycles - and good old hiking boots - we had everything we needed to explore this region that just looks like it is part of another planet. Take away the (sparse) foliage and it looks like the blasted surface of Mars - you almost expect to come over a rise and see a startled little rover sampling it?s way across the surface?..
I really want to thank Jay for letting us use Shooter for a little while - it is one thing to go blasting around the area in the RV (and we do that a lot!), and another thing altogether to sample the terrain in a low, slow Cub - you can really get right down among ?em and take your time to see the details. Louise and I basically traced out our horseback ride from the morning, identifying the trees and rocks we had see from our four-legged transports. We are really beginning to have our ?favorite spots? in the park - places we keep going back to enjoy. I also want to thank local contact Chase for his outstanding air tour of the Rio Grande valley. ?Never cross the border!? was his final pre-take-off advice, and the resulting views of Santa Elena Canyon was worth the careful navigation. (We were a little concerned about the stories Jay had to tell of Citations and heavily armed men, but figured we could always bust someone out of prison with a helicopter and a Piper Cub - I?ve seen that in the movies!). It was great to get a chance to look over Chase?s DUAL RV-10 projects out there in the desert. Corrosion is certainly not going to be one of his top concerns!
Flying out of Houston on Saturday posed an interesting problem. The weather at home was just great, with scattered clouds at 8K, good visibilities, and no real weather. Likewise, the very few METARS out in the Big Bend were clear, as were the forecasts. The problem was the middle of the route - the Texas Hill Country was down to 400? for a couple hundred miles, with no forecast for improvement for a day or so. There weren?t any top reports, and the winds aloft showed pretty stiff headwinds the higher we would go, so I really didn?t want to fly any higher than necessary. There are essentially no weather reporting stations between Junction and Fort Stockton(FST), and Junction was low IFR, while FST was clear - the question was where we would run out of IFR conditions. Given the winds aloft and the distances involved, we were looking at a maximum range IFR flight if FST wasn?t good when we got there, and we had to divert, since the nearest good alternate was another hour away! It was doable in either the RV-6 or the -8, but I was concerned about having to abort into Low IFR conditions in the middle of the route with the more minimally-equipped panel in Mikey (the -6). Without an IFR GPS or a robust set of EFIS features, it would be an exciting approach on top of whatever emergency might drive us down - and I don?t need that much excitement in my leisure flying!
So the nod went to the Valkyrie, and we filed IFR so that if the tops ended up being higher than I was willing to go (due to headwinds), we could just plow along through them. I filed for Fort Stockton, as they had good fuel prices and weather reporting, even though I had no intention of going there, as it is quite a bit north of Big Bend. (I ended up getting Direct SAT, Direct FST, but that was so close to a straight line that it really makes me glad I have an IFR GPS!) Alpine was showing VFR as well, so that was a decent alternate, although the lack of a Terminal Forecast makes me nervous. I was confident that we?d be in clear skies long before we got to FST, and we?d cancel and go direct to our planned fuel stop of Terrell Country (6R6) to load up on gas before heading out to the Ranch. As it turned out, 6R6 was right on the edge of the clouds, but Alpine?s fuel was 50 cents a gallon cheaper than 6R6, so I changed our destination (with center) to Alpine (E38), and eventually cancelled IFR with them when I was ready to descend, as Albuquerque Center had no communications below 9,000? in the area. Alpine was in the middle of a runway repaving project, but had plenty of room for an RV, and with full tanks of cheap fuel, we had a short trip to the Ranch for the weekend.
The campfire talk and star gazing was wonderful, as usual, and as Louise has mentioned, one of the best parts of this trip was finding out that the quirky nature of this ?park? has not changed. No matter how much the State Park Board in Austin would like to make the place more regimented, it is just too far out on the edge of the world for them to homogenize the experience. Maybe some day you?ll be able to drive out there on a paved road and get a full safety lecture, helmet and shin guards before riding a horse?.but I hope that day doesn?t come soon! Yes, there is a measure of chaos, but the guests chip in and contribute to help each other make it work. It reminds me more of an exploration base camp than a tourist destination - and I hope it stays just that way.
Louise and I originally picked this weekend for ourselves because it was the only free time we had for the next several months, and we debated about letting others know we were going. I?m glad that we decided to publicize the trip this time. We have done the place alone and with groups, and it is always fun to have old friends and new friends join us and enjoy the experience together. We can (and do) sneak out there alone whenever we want - the annual semi-disorganized VAF gathering in the winter is getting to be a tradition!
Paul
