It's a good thing to have a pal with a plane

I got a call last night from a friend that owns a plane, and who likes to keep up his skills by flying frequently.   He proposed to meet at the Columbia Airport in Tuolumne County, and fly east.  That was basically the flight plan.  I couldn't possibly refuse that offer.

8am found me at the hanger, and soon we were airborne, heading east across the snowy spine of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Once we gained enough altitude to get over, we kept it, and set off across the basin and range country of western Nevada.

Below is Walker Lake, the sink of the Walker River.   This stream flows east off the Sierras, makes a great fish hook turn in the desert, first north, then south; and flows into this large lake, never to leave but by evaporation.

The Town of Hawthorne lies directly under us here, as we begin to fly north.

Looking west over Mount Grant, with the spine of the Sierras in the distance.  Walker Lake is directly below us here.

The big open pit mine at Yerington, filled with water.  Sierras off to the west.

It was a day of smooth, silky flying, with nothing that could be called even a bump.  It was tough to take pictures from the co pilot's seat, as the Mooney isn't real large, and we are.   In fact, having me in the front was akin to shoe horning a full grown hairy sasquatch into the cockpit. It was close quarters.

Back at Columbia Airport, the Mooney and the Dodge, my choice of transportation today.

They say that good pilots fly frequently to keep their skills up, and judging by the blizzard of dials, switches and levers that needed to be used to fly this little plane, that's no joke.  While we were up, we heard a C-130 ask for clearance to take off from McClellan Air Base back in California.   I asked my pilot if he thought he could get one of those massive birds in the air if he had to.  After thinking about it a second, he said that if he had a bit of coaching, he reckoned he could.   Now that's the sort of confidence you want to hear from the guy flying the plane!