We probably should have planned a little better and been on our way today. But the invitation to visit the Canadian Bush PlaneHeritage Centre and the Entomica Insectarium were too much to turn down. As it turned out staying was a better idea than we thought. The weather forecasts for today turned out to be completely botched. Even here in the marina the wind is huffing to better than the 5 to 10 MPH suggested. It is closer to 20 knots than 10 MPH, strong enough to be sending small whitecaps into the marina itself. First Light is tugging at her lines even though we are surrounded by buildings, boats, and break waters. The botched forecast is not giving me the warm and fuzzies as the next part of the trip includes more than 300 miles down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The lee side of a lake with more than 50 miles of fetch. We will see what we see tomorrow. For today we were landlubbers.
We stopped by the bug display first. There Chris, the very knowledgable operations manager of the place, shared all kinds of interesting information about the collection. The deeper one looks into things, the more fascinating and awe-inspiring nature becomes—bugs, birds, insects, fish, and reptiles, each with a unique story.
After that, we spent the rest of the morning in the Bush Plane museum. It is always a mixed bag of feelings for me whenever we get around airplane collections. For half a century that was my world. This museum featured several airplanes that I have flown and engines I have worked on. I got a chuckle out of the PT6 turboprop engine on display. It had clearly been donated to the museum after suffering a prop strike. The exhaust can was wrinkled in a way I have seen several times. There was a Cessna 172 sitting in the middle of the collection. It would be hard to find a civilian pilot in the western world that hasn't flown one of those. A Bell 47 helicopter sat in a corner. I never managed a helicopter rating. Doesn't mean I never flew one. A bell 47 is one of several that I have. A Ford Tri-motor was part of the collection. I had a chance to take a ride in one once. A pre-flight walk around showed oil streaks on two of the three motors. The rest of the airplane looked equally...shall we say...well used. I passed. I was once contacted by a different Tri-motor owner. He wanted me to fly his airplane to various airshows. I asked him about the pay. He assured me he would be paying for the gas while my pay was the chance to have it in my log book. Clearly he had misunderstood something someone had told him about me. I flew lots of airplanes just for fun. I flew airplanes as favors for friends. But I never did a job for free.
A Taylorcraft sat next to a fire bomber; I flew a Taylocraft and worked on a firebomber. There were several others that are in my logbook somewhere, the circumstances that found me in those cockpits now fuzzy. Maintenance test flight, photo shoot, delivery? It is odd, looking into the past and knowing you actually did things that you can't imagine you would have done.
Deb really enjoyed a cockpit simulation that included a fire bombing run as well as a couple movies they played in a nice theater. One of the movies was a well-done tale about fire bombers and another was a collection of stories by Jane Goodall called Reasons for Hope that included an account of a couple conservation workers attempting to retrain some near extinct Ibis to migrate over the Austrian Alps by having them follow them in a couple of paragliders. I kid you not, paragliders over the Alps...insanity defined.
Tourist time over, we ambled back to the boat. The rest of the day went to getting ready to leave first thing in the morning. Our last full day in Canada has been a good one.
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