Flights….

A quick recap on the last two and half weeks of travel…

Here is a video I did in Google Earth to show how my last two and half weeks has been spent.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/tour.mov 320 260]

So as you can see I’ve had a busy two weeks. Lots of flights. Almost one a day. I did spend two days over a weekend in Brevig Mission, and two days in Unalakleet over another weekend. Besides that I was only in a village for one night and off to the next village the next day. Needless to say I slept like a hibernating bear my weekend in Unalakleet.

This last Monday I flew with Doug (the BSSD plane) to Koyuk at 8:00 AM from Unalakleet. I spent the day there shooting video and then Doug swung back by Koyuk around 5:15 P.M. and took me to Shaktoolik. The weather was kinda sketchy with slushy rain falling outside and a fair bit of wind bouncing the plane around. We flew the trip at about 400 feet off the ocean. The GPS in the front of the plane was displaying the yellow (we may just hit something if you go any lower) and Red (If you fly towards me you will hit something) warnings of well pretty much our entire surroundings.

Warning GPS

I took a little video and used the seat in front of me to stabilize the camera to the best of my abilities. As you can see it wasn’t very easy.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2007/10/bit_bouncy.mov 320 260]

So I spent a night in Shaktoolik the weather there was pretty much terrible. Blowing like crazy and rain pouring down. The next day I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there. John Concilus was there as well, so we both kind of had a weary eye on the sky. Hageland decided to get a plane out flying so we had our chance. The pilot landed the 207 there in Shaktoolik and we quickly loaded up all of our gear. Then a truck pulled up with 500 pounds of mail to be added into the back. We were pretty packed in there. Here are few pictures from the short flight from Shaktoolik to Unalakleet.

Foggy Coast

Waves

Sitting Shotgun

We made it into Unalakleet safe and sound.

My parting picture for this post will be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in Unalakleet. For those of you who lived in this building. Yow know how far from the truth this actually is.

Pot o Gold