Furnace Creek Inn Brunch

Today Michelle and I flew to the Furnace Creek Inn for brunch. We flew south of the China Lake restricted airspace from Inyokern towards Trona and turned north over Trona between the China Lake R-2505 and Echo Range R-2524 restricted airspaces. Once we were north of the Echo range, we turned back east to cross the Panamint mountains into Death Valley. We turned north and flew up Death Valley over Badwater as we approached to land at the Furnace Airport L06. The was no wind and we landed runway 15 since the Mooney ahead of us had used that runway. There were cables to attach tie-downs to, but no tie-downs. I didn't have my tie-downs with me since I removed them for weight when we flew up to San Jose. I pulled the parking break, put the plugs and control lock in and called it good; we'd only be gone an hour and there was zero wind.

Obligatory mugshot

Telescope peak, I've climbed this 2 or 3 times.

Badwater

Furnace Creek Inn resort

Furnace Creek airport L09

The Mooney pilot already had called for the shuttle to the Inn so it arrived just as I finished securing the airplane. The Mooney folks were staying the week at the Furnace Creek ranch so the driver dropped them off first and then drove us up to the Inn, it was probably less than 5 minutes, but I'm glad we didn't walk it. There's only a gravel shoulder and it's uphill for about a mile. There was no wait for the brunch, which I guess is unusual, but the staff said this was because this is the first weekend they are open for the season and not everybody knows they are open again yet. The driver said they usually get between 12 to 40 pilots a weekend, today I was number 3.

The food was excellent and came with eggs to order, an entree on the menu, and the buffet. Michelle and I got omelettes that were way bigger than they needed to be, but they were very good. I ordered the french toast/pancakes/crepes (they were all mini) and Michelle ordered the Pasta Primavera. We also had fruit and too much desert from the buffet. Definitely a top notch brunch although it was a bit pricey at $21.95 per person. After brunch we walked around the resort a little before taking the shuttle back to the airport.

She really loved that dessert buffet

The airplane was still there safe and sound and there was still no wind. Michelle decided she wanted to head up the valley to take a look at Scotty's castle and the Ubehebe crater. We took off and headed north at 2500 feet to maintain 2000 ft over the national park. I called up Riverside Radio and asked if they were familiar with the Ubehebe crater or Scotty's castle for waypoints and they said they were not. She wanted to file me from Furnace Creek back to Inyokern, but I thought that would be dumb since we were flying 45 miles north of that route. I told her my route would be Furnace Creek L06, Stovepipe Wells L09, then up to Bishop BIH before heading south to Inyokern IYK. We weren't going to fly even close to that far north, but that put a line across where we would be flying in case something were to happen. That we at least they'd be looking in the right area. We circled around the sand dunes and airport at Stovepipe Wells and then continued north. We climbed up to 4500 ft as the valley floor started to climb to the north.

My altimeter is below zero!

Sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells

We circled around the crater once, which was very easy to find from the air then headed back east to fly over Scotty's castle. I climbed a bit more since they were nestled in the mountains a bit. After we left Scotty's, we climbed up to 10,500 ft and headed east through a pass and flew over Saline Valley on our way to Owen's Lake. I couldn't reach Joshua approach until we reached Owen's Valley even though we were pretty high. They responded near Lone Pine and I got flight following back to IYK. On our way down the valley, we could clearly see Mt. Whitney, Olancha peak, Owen's Lake, the cinder cone, and Fossil Falls.

Ubehebe Crater. Michelle and I visited here with my parents a few years ago.

Scotty's Castle, we also visited here with my parents.

Mt. Whitney, it's the one below the space between "visited here" in the title of the above picture. Kevin and I climbed this a few months ago.

Lava flow and Fossil Falls.

More Lava flow

I started a nice slow descent towards Inyokern, but we never felt any bumps. The wind was out of the south, which is not too common and we landed straight in runway 15 to avoid the tow-plane operation on runway 2-20. I recorded the tach time at 2.1 hours and the timer at 2.4 hours. Fuel burn was a bit high at 13.8 gph, but we did do a bunch of low level flying, which does take more fuel. I love flying this time of year because the air is smooth and cool, the flight was perfect. This is the first flight I'll enter into my new logbook (I just filled my original logbook).

The link to the photo album for this flight can be found here.