Mountain Biking in Moab, and a LONG taxi ride

You can’t really have a website on fly-in adventures without including Moab.  Our adventure wasn’t really Moab, but the flight back.

My wife, Betsy, and I left the kids with the grandparents and flew out to Moab for the weekend.  The airport is pretty far from town, but a shuttle complete with bike racks took us into town.  We did the famous Slick Rock trail in the evening, and then rode the almost equally famous Porcupine Rim trail on Saturday.

However, a storm came in Saturday night.  It didn’t rain, but it blew, and I stayed up most of the night listening to a shutter on the motel slamming back against a wall, and thinking about the flight the next day.  We got to the airport early, but it was really blowing and we hung out for a couple of hours waiting.  I knew it wasn’t going to be dangerous, but darn uncomfortable to fly back. This was when I had a Cessna 182, so I couldn’t fly as high.

My wife really wanted to get back, so I warned her about the bumpy ride and we set off.  We should have stayed.  Did you know that Nevada is the most mountainous state in the union, in terms of the number of separate mountain ranges?  Well, we flew over every one, and every one bounced us up and down and around.  When we got to the Sierra Nevada, the crest was covered with clouds and the wind was just as bad – and over the Sierras that amount of wind would be dangerous.

We landed in Minden NV with a stiff crosswind, which was a little scary and perhaps even a lot scary for my wife. We decided to call it quits for the day and stay nearby.  When the taxi came, Betsy blurted out, “How much to take me to Placerville?”  Now, I really, really wanted to support Betsy because I knew she was exhausted and wanted to see the kids, but I couldn’t help think a taxi ride over the Sierra Nevada mountains were going to cost quite a bit.  However it became obvious this was something very important to her, so that’s what happened.  She ended up calling a friend to start driving and they met about halfway, and it wasn’t as much as I thought it might  be, around $80.

That left me in a jam because without a rental car I wasn’t sure how I was going to get back to get my plane.  So I stayed the night at the Carson Valley Inn, then got up early to continue the flight.