The Flight Home (345/365)

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December 1, 2015 – Today was a morning of wrapping up the workshop followed by a couple of afternoon flights to get home. When I was halfway through the final morning’s session the winds started to pick up and the rain to fall again. Fog and high winds would be the only threat to my flight out of here, Bella Coola would have been a different story.

I was, however, very concerned for those eight or so participants who were going home by boat. They had long slogs ahead of them, 4-6 hours in small vessels. Nothing but wishes of safety for them, anyone who has spent any time out on the ocean has encountered sever conditions that can be life threatening, and this group has seen its share living in this part of the coast. As my plane took off, before I disappeared into the clouds, I could see that the world ahead for all of them was dark and stormy.

The flight from Bella Bella to Campbell River was completely in the clouds, with nothing to look at but the inside of a pillowcase. From the North Island to about mid-Island there was a solid wall of cloud that gave a good indication of what was on its way, I’d managed to catch two windows in some very foul weather in order to get in and out of Bella Bella this week.

In Campbell River, those of us flying on to Vancouver, were asked to deplane, go into the small terminal, collect our luggage from the baggage carousel, and walk about 100 yards to the other end of the building, go through security, give our luggage back to the people who had just taken it off the plane, sit for 5 minutes or so, and then walk back outside across the tarmac and climb back aboard the little flying culvert.

Wierd.

But where there was nothing to look at from Bella Bella, the flight from Campbell River to Vancouver provided spectacular scenery! The sun was low in the sky, dropping lower, and where it pierced the clouds it created a dazzling reflection on the calm waters of the Strait of Georgia.

The plane flew quite low the entire way down the Strait, below the cloud level and in some places below the level of the hills on the Sunshine Coast. It made for some fantastic views of the Georgia Strait and of Vancouver as we banked around to land from the East.

I live in a part of the world that can provide such spectacular scenery and I’m so lucky to be able to visit and spend time in some smaller areas that still have a less touched feeling to them. The BC coast still has so many wild places with beautiful vistas, particularly from this altitude.

There is nowhere else quite like here.