"Whew! We Made It"

Well, we flew out today - twice. The planes were late getting to the strip this morning, they didn't arrive until almost 9am instead of 8am. And, that was all the difference! We took off & made a turn downriver. The pilot would look over his left shoulder & shake his head, then over his right & shake his head & grimace. Then he took another turn up a drainage, turned around & went back, went downstream a little further & tried another drainage... no luck. The clouds were dropping lower every second (literally) and much of the time you couldn't see the mountains on each side. Then the snow started. Pretty soon, I start seeing familiar ground and we're landing! Back where we started! The weather had moved in too fast so both planes (there were 2 groups of us trying to get out) got back to the ranch & had to just wait it out. There was some concern that it might take a day or two but the pilots kept checking the aviation weather website & watching outside. After about 3 hours, they jumped up and said "It looks like we've got a small window here, let's try it again!" So we all rushed back to the airstrip & loaded up. It was better the second time, but not my favorite flight ever! I was glad I was resting in God's Grace today! We landed here in Salmon, safe & sound. And then the pilot said "That was a great flight! Pretty smooth. Way better than some of those flights in hot weather in the summer." Oh.... Great. Maybe I'll just stay at the ranch until October.

Now we're in a motel in Salmon, Jeff didn't want to drive to Boise today. Ben and I went and saw a movie (fun!) and we all did a little shopping. Jeff is currently rooting Penn State on in their championship game. Tomorrow we head to Boise and then up to Richland Saturday afternoon for our 4-day break! Yeah!