I had an epic couple of days. First it was out early to meet a friend in Cle Elum for breakfast on Friday.
Then I took a different path to get to my friend's place on Lake Roosevelt. He was taking delivery of two 53' semi loads of his log cabin home.
I went over Blewett pass to Cashmere and down across the Columbia to head north on 97.
I drove up through all the little towns and burgs heading up to the Okanagan,
driving along the big river. I left it at the Okanagan river and followed that north and bade farewell to the mighty Columbia for a few hours.
At Tonasket I took a right onto 20, heading for Republic and eventually Kettle Falls.
This was new road for me.
Right at the top of Wauconda pass (Elevation 4310) I spotted this museum relic, preserved by the dry climate. Who knows how long it has sat on the edge of the field.
Republic is a quaint bustling little town, like a boardwalk western without the boardwalk. It does have a tractor on the roof of the feed store.
It is a steep winding climb up out of Republic to Sherman Pass, the highest year round pass in the state at 5575'. I had no clue about that, and it had several logging trucks up and down it. From the top it is an even steeper descent east to the bridge over the river at Kettle Falls. it drops down to ~1300' in 22 miles.
Twin bridges at Kettle Falls, the green highway bridge superimposed over the red iron railroad bridge.
That afternoon we got ready for the delivery, moving the camper and things out of the shop. The pickup camper now has a nice view, and is connected to water power and sewer. These are my digs when I come over to help.
He'll put it inside before the snow flies.
We shifted these three trailers with his truck to over by the container, and then I attempted to take that feeder next to the forklift to the same area behind the container.
Nope. Right about the end of that right trailer the front end cut in 2' down to the axle. It weighs 25,000 pounds and is really good at finding soft spots.
I extracted myself using the boom and we patched it up. No more driving there for a month or so.
We had time Saturday to do other things and we asked the neighbor if we could stage or turn around the trucks at his place for a contingency plan.
The neighbor has a ~500' runway and a hangar.
We got to BSing about stuff as a couple of pilots do, and he showed me this Just Aviation Super STOL that needs about 300' of that runway, maximum.
On the way back we spotted a 310Q out in the middle of a pasture. It is a disused grass strip that is too short for those operations, in my old not bold pilot's opinion.
There was an ex-Army Twin Bonanza next to the hangar.
The trucks were not getting there for a while so I measured up and ran for the plumbing to hook up the sewers. When I got back they had a load ready for me to start, and I unloaded the two trucks in an hour and a half. It's what I do.