Ed Bundy's Trip To West Yellowstone
   by Ed Bundy (ebundy@micron.net)
   RV-6A / Idaho

click images to enlarge

This first batch is from a trip we made to West Yellowstone in Montana. They were having a fly-in and we made the trip up there for the day.

This is Harrison Ford’s DeHavilland Beaver. We arrived at West Yellowstone around 11am and looked at all the airplanes and then went into town for lunch and the seminars. When we got back to the airport a string of HUGE thunderstorms were dumping on the airport one after the other. I was standing at the FBO counter leafing through some literature when an oddly familiar voice asked if they could borrow the courtesy car. I looked up and it was Harrison Ford. His family was getting a few things out of the Beaver and I snapped a shot of it after they left.

Here is a shot of the incredible forest and meadows of NE Idaho / S. Montana.

One of the best things about XC travel is the people you meet. We stopped at Rexburg, ID for gas on the way home and met a very friendly FBO operator. While we were getting fueled I looked in the hangar and found a beautiful Grasshopper that the owner was restoring. The stop took a lot longer than planned with the shop talk that took place, but it was well worth it.

This next picture is from flying over the Craters Of The Moon National Monument in SE Idaho. These lava beds stretch as far as the eye can see and are somewhat intimidating to fly over. There are plenty of places to land as the flat parts are fairly smooth, but it would feel like being stranded on the moon! There are also some suspicious restricted areas for the INEEL (Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory) where they store a lot of radioactive waste and do some radiation testing. There are a handful of little towns scattered about that look like they have populations of less than 50. BTW, to help clean up it’s image the INEEL added the extra E very recently. So now they are also environmental in addition to hoarding zillions of drums of spent nuclear fuel...

This is back at home base, the Sunrise Skypark in SW Idaho. Shortly after we landed, a sailplane that had traveled some 300 miles on a cross country abruptly ran out of “juice” and plopped down on our humble strip.

All in all an amazing little day trip with an RV. We traveled 700 miles in a little over 4 hours and burned 27 gallons of gas.

Since I just finished painting I had to send you one of those too. I hope to paint the trim in a few weeks. I’ll send some more travel pics soon.

Ed