Rogflys

The approach to Excursion Inlet is a little unusual. They have installed lights and a siren that the pilot can activate from the air to warn the workers at the cannery to stay clear. It is also to notify the bears that a plane is coming. Then a low fly over at about 500 feet to ensure the runway is clear. The wind typically is blowing from the southeast, in this picture the view is to the north west, so the landing is makde coming toward the camera.After flying over head and turning around out over the water, this is the view back to the southeast on "final".

This afternoon I will be giving a flightseeing tour of Glacier bay. More than likely I will be going up the west arm and will be showing the Margerie Glacier at the very north west end of Glacier Bay.

This is the Johns Hopkins Glacier, also in the west arm. You can not really see it in the picture, but there is a lot of ice floating in the water below the glacier.

One of the places I get to fly into is Excursion Inlet. It is a fish cannery located on an inlet just East of Gustavus. Of course there are no roads to get there, so like so many places in Alaska, the only way to get there is boat or plane. Right now we seem to be doing about 3 flights a day into the cannery. We fly a lot of supplies in, as well as workers. And we haul out plenty of fish. Along with the cannery there are a couple of sport fishing lodges and many private cabins located in the inlet.

This is the view you get on take off headed to the south east. Yes it is narrow and the trees are tall. It gets pretty exciting when you are fully loaded!Note the blue sky in these pictures. This past week it has been 80 degrees and sunshine here. Better weather than they have been having back home in So. Cal.!!!

I made it to Alaska safely and am getting settled in. I have a small cabin in Gustavus, and have been spending my days flying back and forth to Juneau. The other day I had the opportunity to ride along on a park service sea otter survey. They fly around looking for sea otters and count them. This picture is a part of a large group of otters. The surveyer said the group contained about 450 animals total.
I was able to see 2 moose as we flew around, only got a picture of one.
As we flew around we also saw many seals and sea lions, a couple of bears, and some humpback whales. It is has been fun so far. The weather is pretty good, a bit of rain the last couple of days but supposed to clear up and be in the 70's on Monday!!