Ray Sluk and I met at Penn State over 25 years ago. He went off to a career in logistics, living overseas for nearly two decades. The guy likes adventure. His 200+ skydiving jumps are ample proof. In 2004, he got his private pilot’s license.

I got my private ticket at age 20. Flying cross country became my passion, with family, career, and life getting in the way. Time out to raise the girls. After the younger daughter left for the university, I returned to the airport.

Ray visited Alaska with his employer, FedEX. I first visited with my family when I was 12 years old. I’ve been back 9 more times. Once one sees the beauty, the wildlife, the empty space, and the single engine airplanes that everyone seems to be using, it becomes clear that flying to and within Alaska will be an awesome adventure.

Starting in 1999, I became a member of Edmonton Flying Club. It is how I got the idea to fly a Cessna 152 around the North a year before Ray and I flew the 2005 trip, starting up the Alaska Highway. Of course we upgraded to a Cessna 172 SP.

Ray wanted a flying adventure. He noted that I’d had the successful but more geographically limited solo flight in the 152 the year before. He also knew I knew many of these places from visits on the ground (I’d already been to Dawson City, YT four times before our trip).

I wanted a flying adventure. It is a lot safer with two pilots, especially when weather, distance, terrain, lack of RADAR coverage, and few airports mean decisions must be made correctly the first time. And since 5th grade I’d wanted to go up the Porcupine River valley from Fort Yukon, AK, to Old Crow, YT, the only town in the Yukon Territory with no road access.


Edmonton to Fairbanks

Arriving in Edmonton by commercial carrier, we spent an afternoon buying supplies for the journey. Water, 10,000 calories per person emergency rations, some camping and survival gear were needed, all within weight limits, of course.

Next day was check out by club instructors. Written test, compute weight and balance, and practical flying. Each of us were then certified by the chief instructor to take the club 172SP on this journey. My mountain flying with Texas Civil Air Patrol qualified us for flying the Alaska Highway portion of the route.

First leg was Ray’s. We had only enough time and weather to fly from Edmonton to Grande Prairie, AB, for fuel, then my leg to Fort Nelson, BC. Arrival was done while dodging spectacular lightning. This oil town has a lot of aviation to support exploration and production work. The Shell aviation fuel dealer has the oldest minivan on earth, I think. We shared it with two other transient pilots to overnight in town.

We left Fort Nelson knowing we had a choice. Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, is the only logical next stop. And it is 300 miles. We could either follow the Alaska Highway through the mountains, or we could fly GPS direct to Watson Lake, with absolutely no emergency stopping places. Weather was good. We had lots of gas to get there, but no places to divert to. From about the 70% point of the journey onward, we did not have enough fuel to return to Fort Nelson.

There is no RADAR coverage beyond Grande Prairie, AB. So one relies on weather reports, Flight Service when they can be reached by repeater (they’re physically in Edmonton). Of course calling 866 WX BRIEF (in Canada) can get a flight briefing. We were told it would be cloudy, with perhaps some light drizzle near Watson Lake.

After our “point of no return” rain wasn’t the issue. Ceiling was. We’ve all done scud-running. Hopefully none of us are proud of it, especially with no alternate airports in any direction. With Ray flying I correlated our position with obstacles. We were getting down to minimums. When we finally landed at Watson Lake Airport, we had an unexpected greeting from the owners (husband and wife) of one of the two fuelers.

“Which way did you come?” he asked. “From the East,” I replied. “What was the ceiling?” “Maybe 500 AGL”. He immediately jumped into a Super Cub and took off, heading North. His wife did the same in a second Super Cub. Each was back within 10 minutes. 100 feet AGL to the North. Guess we’d been lucky.

Refueling and visiting with the Canadian Aerodrome Radio Service radio operator gave time for the ceiling to lift. I flew us to Whitehorse along the Alaska Highway. Though the clouds gave us a gray day, the features are still beautiful. In Whitehorse we had time to go for lunch downtown, and to launch into sunshine for Dawson City.

This was Ray’s leg. Take off, over fly Lake Lebarge, made famous in the Robert W. Service poem “The Cremation of Sam Magee” set in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. From there the Yukon River flows to Carmacks, then to where the Klondike River meets the Yukon at Dawson City.

Dawson City airport is a gravel strip, common in the North. What isn’t common is the fact that arriving from the South the airport is impossible to see until overhead! This is due to the cliff on the south side of the Klondike. To the North and East are hills. Better be low enough upon arrival, love right downwind and very tight pattern if you’re landing on 27. What a thrill!

CARS radio guy at Dawson City airport came from Quebec. Great sense of hospitality. He called a hotel owner who came himself to take us to his hotel. There is a great 1898 feeling to the hotel and the town. Town has gravel streets and sidewalks that are really boardwalks. We rode the ferry to the other side of the Yukon River, just to experience the tremendous pull of the river.

Next day our leg was to Eagle, Alaska, about 40 miles down river from Dawson City. Others I’ve talked with about flying in this region had said that we would have to clear U.S. Customs at Northway, Alaska, about 200 miles away. But the Canadian Customs guys knew that a new U.S. Customs guy had just begun working in Eagle. I called him at 7AM, forgetting that Alaska is in another time zone. Published number turns out to be his home number, and I woke him up!

My leg. Follow the Yukon River. Piece of cake. Note the forest fires near Eagle. But when the GPS said 3 miles, we couldn’t find the airport! The approach requires flying right at the high north riverbank, then making a left turn on short final. I was high. Ever slip a Cessna on full flaps at a speed about 15% over white arc? Great airplane. We taxied up to the SUV with the waiting U.S. Customs agent.

Turns out the guy had just finished training, and had never done an arrival by air before. He was very gracious about my waking him. We all learned a lot.

Ray’s leg to Fairbanks was over very beautiful country. Day was so clear that once we saw Mount McKinley, possibly 200 miles in the distance. Controllers again to land at FAI, an airport with free overnight parking, two 7,000 foot runways, and its own pond for float plane operations between the two paved runways.

We took a real break in Fairbanks. Ray has a friend and former neighbor who is a minister who has established a church for a primarily Native Alaskan congregation on the south bank of the Chena River. He knows the owner of the paddlewheel steamer company that runs the Chena and out into the Tannana River.. We got on board. That is how we met Susan Butcher.

Until her untimely death from cancer in 2006, Susan Butcher had won the Iditarod Dog Sled Race more times than any Alaskan. The race honors the heroic efforts to deliver diphtheria serum to Nome residents from Seward in the 1920’s. Look at the map. That is about 1200 miles. The original trip with serum was made in the dead of winter.

Susan’s kennel was near the church. She showed us how she exercises the dogs daily. Her 54 dogs would beg to be harnessed in the 9 dog team. And she’d tie the other end to an ATV. With the motor off, they’d pull her and the ATV until she was sure they’d be better animal athletes. Six iterations would allow her to include all dogs, and she’d have her exercise for the day! No wonder she inspired a tee shirt that said, “Alaska, where men are men and women win the Iditarod!”


Fairbanks to Wiley, Yukon Territory

I flew the leg to Fort Yukon, AK. If you look on the map, Fort Yukon is on the north bank of the Yukon River at that river’s northernmost point. It is also above the Arctic Circle. No gas, no service, no one there. Fortunately the weather was drop dead gorgeous, and we had enough gas to make Old Crow, which is in the very northern part of the Yukon Territory. Ray flew up the Porcupine River while I got to see the land I’d incorrectly imagined in 5th grade as forested! Bet that place is bleak in winter!

We landed at Old Crow and cleared Customs with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Things are informal in the north. Wonder if Customs officers give traffic tickets? That wouldn’t matter much, since there is no road in and out.

And that is how we learned more about Old Crow. Remember the 100LL we didn’t buy in Fort Yukon? Well, gas generally costs more per gallon in Canada than the US. In remote locations the price goes up. We’d already paid $5.50 per gallon in Dawson City. But in Old Crow, 100LL is flown in in 55 gallon drums, and it cost us $9.60 a gallon!

We also learned that the village builds an ice road once every five years so that bulky items like building materials can be trucked in. They’d done so the year before, and new housing was going up. So was a new air terminal, the size of a 60 x 60 box hangar.

The ice road begins where a Porcupine River tributary crosses the gravel year round road from Dawson City in the south to Inuvik, NT, in the north. There are the only trees for a hundred miles, along the bank of the stream. South four miles is the only truck stop in the 300 mile stretch of road at Eagle Plains. The owner of the truck stop (think large log cabin, not Flying J!) once told me he is open all year, even when the temperature plunges to -67 Fahrenheit! And his business is built atop basement rock, making drilling a well impossible. How does he get water for laundry, cooking, and the small hotel?

In winter, they drive a tank truck to the tributary, use a chain saw (which they start in a heated garage before the trip to the stream!) to cut a hole in the ice. A quick insertion of the hose into the frigid water, start the pump, and pump 8000 gallons into the tank.

Now for the fun part. The Diesel truck must climb the steep grade up to the truck stop. The owner told me that his enduring nightmare is that the Diesel fails and the tank freezes and splits. He keeps a bulldozer to pull the truck if needed!


Wiley Airstrip

Just north of where the road crosses the stream, the road climbs the hill and flattens out for about 4000 feet in length. It is here that the Yukon authorities established a public airport called Wiley. The gravel runway is the gravel road! The “airport” consists of a windsock at the north end, and signs at each end saying “no stopping, airstrip”!

You know how American pilots are reluctant to land on roads more because of liability issues than safety issues. Well, in Canada, it is against the law for an attorney to take a contingency fee case. No junk lawsuits!! So Canadians practice landing on roads. I’d never done it. And here it was perfectly legal.

There was almost no wind. We over flew for three miles both north and south of the strip (called Wiley on the chart). Absolutely no traffic in either direction for at least 3 miles. Downwind, base, final, touchdown. What a thrill.

Ray just HAD to have a picture of all this. He got out, and I turned the plane around. Using the side sloping roadway at the north end, I’d turn left, let gravity drift the plane backwards. Took four “turns” to end up facing south.

Ray came to the door. “Let me get your picture,” he said. “No,” I yelled. “We have to go NOW!!!” Looking through the windshield an 18 wheeler appeared at the south end of the runway. His dust plume made it clear he wasn’t slowing down. Before Ray had his door latched, I had full throttled the Cessna. The truck and the Cessna raced toward each other head on.

For safety, we knew he couldn’t go up. I’d pulled on the landing light, but his dust plume remained as a high speed indicator. We got a close up look at the driver’s amazed face as we went over his stack.

How did he get there when we’d made sure that the road was clear? After takeoff, we realized he could have been parked in the shade of the trees at the stream, perhaps sleeping or eating. My first experience landing on a road now included vehicular traffic! Shared facilities have their downside. As we flew away to the north, Ray offered, “That experience will be the highlight of this entire adventure.” If only he’d known… Wiley turned out to be ONE highlight.


Wiley to the Arctic Ocean

With beautiful countryside below, we flew north to Aklavik, NT. This town sits among the many channels of the Mackenzie River delta. From the air, the water and land forms a pattern that looks like the photo of a human brain. And the elevation of both the town and the airport are less than five feet above sea level! Good thing the Arctic Ocean, which is less than 20 miles away, has no noticeable tidal surge.

From Aklavik Ray flew us to Inuvik. The history is that Aklavik was built just after World War II. But geologists noticed it was sinking as central heating melted the permafrost. With the Mackenzie waters all around Aklavik, the Canadian Government decided in the early 1960’s to build Inuvik about 50 miles east on the firm east bank of the delta. Inuvik has a central heating plant, wooden houses insulated from the permafrost, and even a small harbor that the Canadian Coast Guard visits. Inuvik has become the base of operations for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.
Inuvik airport is a place to see interesting things from aviation. We talked with a crew from Ken Borek Air. Ken Borek Air specializes in operating twin turbo props in severely cold environments. Ken Borek Air was hired to retrieve a female doctor from the South Pole Station on Antarctica who had self diagnosed her breast cancer. She had to be extracted in July, the depth of the Antarctic winter. It took nine days to fly a turbo Twin Otter from Inuvik to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.

But Ken Borek Air also owns a DC-3, and it was sitting on the ramp at Inuvik, leaking more engine oil than I’d seen on the ground since a D8 Cat bulldozer cracked an oil pan on a rock. The crew was gassing up, about to leave. These guys were headed for Melville Island, which is in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, ABOVE the Magnetic North Pole. Imagine the navigation challenge before GPS. Imagine the survival gear needed if an engine quit. The 30 year old pilot’s words to his crew just before getting in the plane were, “Let’s go make history.” The plane was nearly 70 years old. Would you drive into the desert in a 1940 Ford Roadster? Neither would I.

Inuvik also has a structure we were to see duplicated later in Yellowknife. The town weathervane is a Cessna 170 atop a metal light pole. The plane swings in the wind to give wind direction!

After a pleasant overnight in Inuvik, Ray filed our flight plan for Tuktoyaktuk on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. I’d been there in 2000 as part of the 1000 mile boat trip with my cousin down the Mackenzie River. We were told Tuk had ground fog the morning we were to fly there, but we hoped it would burn off as we flew toward Tuk field


Arctic Ocean to Fred Sorensen’s Cabin

A visit to Tuk was not to be. We turned around without being able to land and headed for Norman Wells, which is southeast and along the Mackenzie. We filed a new flight plan in mid-air with Inuvik. I padded in time for an adventure that Ray didn’t yet know about. And he was flying this leg.

During the 2000 boat trip down the Mackenzie, my cousin and fellow pilot Jim Moser and I had been told by a Canadian Coast Guard captain about Fred Sorensen’s cabin on the southwest bank of the Mackenzie where the Ontaratue River adds its water to the much larger Mackenzie. We’d been asked to look in on Fred, as his wife had died the winter before and he was alone.

It was during the 2000 visit that Jim (my cousin and millennium 1000 mile boat trip partner) and I learned that the lumber to build Inuvik had come from Fred Sorensen’s saw mill on the Ontaratue. We also learned that Fred had a 1600 foot landing strip that did not appear on Canadian VFR charts. Unlike in the U.S., private strip owners may prevent their strip from appearing on a VFR chart. I asked Ray to over fly the site. But first we had to find it!

Using the VFR chart, I calculated the latitude and longitude. Entering this into the panel mount Garmin GPS, Ray flew us in severe clear to within a mile of Fred’s home, sawmill, and landing strip. We circled and determined that though inhabited, no one was currently there.

Looking down on the tiny strip, Ray and I discussed landing. We determined that with no wind, an arrival from the south would give us a clear “low and slow” approach needed. A missed approach meant we could use the elevation difference of about 70 feet between the strip and the river to regain airspeed.

On his first try into an unimproved strip, Ray nailed the landing. We shut down and just listened. No sound of man, and almost no bugs. Time to dismount.

After obligatory pictures of each other and the site, we began the walk down the path to the cabin. We stopped suddenly as we heard a “vocal” sound of a moose in the willows on the south side of the path. At our feet were fresh moose hoof prints and warm moose droppings. Since a moose can stand 7 feet at the shoulder and get into a stomping mood if territory or a nearby calf is threatened. We immediately trotted to the porch of the cabin.

The cabin was locked. I was surprised, because it was well known since its construction in 1962 that Fred Sorensen never locked his cabin, and never, ever turned away any visitor.

The cabin reminded me of the Friday night in July of 2000 when two grandsons of Fred Sorensen, Mac and Joe, hosted us in that cabin. We contributed food as did they. Each of us wanted the new tastes from the other larder. The visit to the site also reminded me that the outhouse was 130 feet away. What must that trip have been like in the dark days of January (Fred’s is above the Arctic Circle).

Heading back to the plane, I told Ray that I had a request. It was still his leg to fly to Norman Wells, the oil town further south along the Mackenzie. But I wanted to take off and land from Fred’s amazingly basic air strip. And a takeoff from a 1600 foot sand pit covered with willows attempting to reclaim it would be an unimproved short field slice of flying experience.

The takeoff roll took longer than I’d expected in the cool morning air, but we were airborne. We flew over the amazing Mackenzie, turned downwind, and made a short field landing with the stall horn screeching. Sand really takes the speed out quickly!


Fred’s to Norman Wells

Ray’s flawless takeoff took us toward Norman Wells. For perspective, Norman Wells is 400 miles from Inuvik. Inuvik has a VOR. So does Norman Wells. The next one is also along the Mackenzie at Fort Simpson. It is 800 miles from Inuvik to Fort Simpson, and 1000 miles along the entire route of the river. To say the least, VOR density is nothing like even the sparsely populated parts of the U.S. (like northwestern South Dakota). It is hard to fly for over three hours between VOR locations anywhere in the lower 48.

So how did flyers find their way before GPS became so available about 10 years ago? ADF is the answer (augmented by pilotage and the very aptly named dead reckoning).

ADF can use AM radio broadcast stations for navigation. There are only 6 settlements on 1000 miles of the Mackenzie. Five have AM radio stations, even though the smallest has only 150 people. (There are no broadcast TV stations, but satellite dishes are now found on homes with electricity. That way residents can learn about living in places like Santa Barbara. This short lived soap opera was all the rage in the Russian Far East!)

Like Inuvik, Norman Wells has scheduled air service. And you can walk from the airport to the Mackenzie Valley Inn, owned and operated by Janie Hong. Superb food, and clean comfortable rooms. Jim and I stayed there in 2000 to break our 8 days of no showers. Ray and I checked in, then walked to town. We even went to the museum.

Norman Wells is there because in 1921, Imperial Oil of Canada (part of Exxon today) found an oil seep in the waters of the Mackenzie River at that spot. Seems the Dene Native Canadians had known about this for some years. Over flight confirmed the seep. Drilling began in the following winter, so that the ice would serve as a platform. Commercial quantities of oil were confirmed.

During World War II, crude was pumped from Norman Wells hundreds of miles over the mountains to a refinery in Whitehorse, YT. This CANOL pipeline and its fuel made possible both the building of the Alaska Highway and the delivery of over 1000 bombers and fighters from the lower 48 to an airfield near Fairbanks, AK, where Russian pilots would come to take delivery of their Lend Lease property for use on the Russian Front against Germany. Even the aircraft delivery distances were monumental.

Today Norman Wells uses artificial islands as oil and gas production platforms, and continues to produce from this long lived field. Some refining is done in a small refinery in Norman Wells. But since the 5000 people who live along the 1000 miles of the Mackenzie (and 64% of them live in Inuvik), crude is now piped into the Canadian grid north of Edmonton.


Norman Wells to Yellowknife, NT, but Not in a Straight Line

The following day we left Norman Wells south bound. I wanted to see the old fort town where Great Bear Lake empties into Great Bear River, which in turn empties into the Mackenzie.

Forts were build in the Canadian western Arctic from 1680 through about 1760 as trading posts for primarily The Hudson’s Bay Trading Company and to some extent for the Northwest Trading Company. Interestingly, if you visit any major Canadian city today, you’ll find a department store called The Bay. It is direct descendant of the original Hudson’s Bay Company, which succeeded by trading with Native Canadians for fur pelts, which were in high demand in Europe. These two companies also projected British authority over these vast lands at a time the British and French were vying for control of North America.

Our stop was to be a solitary visit. No way to get to town. We did notice that considerable construction material was stacked beside the runway. Mineral exploration was heating up in the region, which enjoyed its last boom in the 1950’s as uranium from the area was used for both weapons and nuclear power.

Next stop, Nahanni Butte, a very small town on the Nahanni River upstream from Fort Simpson. While I lived in The Hague, The Netherlands earlier this decade, I’d traveled to the Russian Far East for Royal Dutch/Shell. It was there I met Doug Burch, a Canadian who had done community development work for his government in Nahanni Butte. He’d told me about the thrilling arrivals to the airstrip.

This gravel strip required landing on 18 that morning. But to get there, one had only one choice. That is to enter left base, then fly directly at the butte for which the town is named. Since its elevation of the butte above the valley floor is easily 700 feet, the pilot’s impression is that you’re flying directly into the side of the mountain. Last minute turn to final, and you’re obliged to land. THIS is why we fly.

We left the Nahanni Butte airstrip southbound, then turned toward Fort Simpson. How is it that a town of less than 1000 people has two airports? The one downtown has camping on the field, and a view of the river. We chose the other airport, where occasional prop-jet commercial flights land. Ever pay a $100 call out fee to buy $6.00/gal gas? We had no choice on a Saturday morning. Guess that is why there are no scheduled flights except Monday to Friday!

From Fort Simpson Ray flew us to Yellowknife. Even the view is spectacular. Approaching Great Slave Lake, one has the feeling that flying near the shore is a good idea. Looking down, the geography is classic “Canadian Shield”. All the lakes are oriented north northwest to south southeast. Bare rock is everywhere, with desperate three and four foot trees bravely trying to find places to put roots. Shoreline at Yellowknife is spectacular, especially the inner harbor where the float planes operate.

Ray and I found a second weather vane made from an airplane at the Yellowknife Airport. This one is bigger than the one in Inuvik. Yellowknife used a WWII vintage British Bristol twin engine bomber to indicate the wind direction atop a large metal pole!

At age 14, my parents took our family to Yellowknife on a family vacation. Dad liked lonely places. He had read a lot of Jack London, so the Canadian Arctic was the target of this earlier trip. It was in Yellowknife in the early 1960’s that Max Ward was operating his air charter service. He had De Havilland Beavers and Otters on floats. And he had a Bristol Bomber.

Our family flew in that bomber for 800 nighttime miles from Yellowknife to Edmonton, sitting without seat belts in side facing canvas seats. Seems Canadian paratroopers had done the same.

That Bristol survives. With its flying service now over, it sits atop a large metal pole as a weather vane at Yellowknife airport. Max Ward went on to own a B-747 which he used to haul Canadians to sunny destinations on charter flights to the U.S., Mexico, and the Caribbean Islands, including Cuba. Max is remembered in the Yellowknife Museum, for his pioneering flights to support mineral exploration and production.

Yellowknife today is the seat of North West Territory government. And it is the center of uranium, gold, and diamond mining. The rest of us know it as the starting point for the very popular TV show “Ice Road Truckers”.


Yellowknife to Edmonton

The following day I flew us south to Fort Smith. But 50 miles from town Ray spotted an airfield at a hydroelectric site. Thus we began “collecting” airports on our way “home”.

Fort Smith provided fuel, and the fantastic view of the rapids in the Slave River. We passed Fort Chippewa, a major landmark airport that sells no fuel (a reminder to plan very carefully), then to Embarrass air strip. This Forest Service strip is among 25 foot trees along the Slave River. I’d landed there the year before in the C-152. Great rest stop.

My leg continued to Fort McMurray. As we arrived, we flew over the huge oil sands projects that Shell Canada and others have built there. We stayed overnight, visited the museum that explains the oil sands process for extracting the oil. It takes a lot of steam. The steam is produced by natural gas. The natural gas is piped in from as far away as 200 miles. So the huge natural gas industry in the area isn’t connected to the U S grid. But we do buy a large share of the oil.

The next day, Ray’s leg would take us back to Edmonton, but not before collecting a few more airports. The public strip at Christina Basin was a must, since it was turf rather than the gravel one finds in the high Arctic.

And then there was the strip at Canadian Natural Resources. Though private, it had hosted me in the C-152 the prior summer when scud running near Christina basin had turned me back north. Here was this haven from low clouds. Ray set up to land with no wind indicator on the ground. On final, I noticed that water on the nearby lake showed a reverse wind direction at about 12 knots. Ray made an excellent downwind landing. It was also safe, since the runway is a bit aggressively up hill! Turn around for take off kept it safe, and a good learning experience.

We made one more stop at a paved airport outside Edmonton called Cooking Lake, which has both paved runway and seaplane base. There we talked with local pilots and washed the grass stains from Fred’s and Christina Basin from the landing gear and especially the prop!


Return to Edmonton City Centre Airport and the Edmonton Flying Club, settle the bill

To review, we’d spent 9 days covering over 8000 miles of beautiful, largely empty country. We met people we enjoyed, collected stories, had flying experiences that are hard to duplicate, and been to the edge of civilization. We imagined that we were in the land of Sgt. Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Yukon Gold Rush prospectors, or the 1920’s mineral explorers. And our log books have some unusual sounding names entered.

Flying is about stories that last until we’re in rocking chairs near the fire on future winter nights. May all our stories, yours and mine, include personal adventure.

Ray Sluk retired as Vice President Latin America from FedEX. He is currently co-owner of the rapidly growing Falcon Aviation Academy in Peach Tree City, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. A private pilot at the time of the 2005 flight, Ray now holds ASEL, ASES, and AMEL at the commercial level, plus CFI.

Ken Graham has spent his professional career developing leaders as a business school faculty member (Penn State and the University of Texas-Austin), consultant, and senior leader for Allstate and Royal Dutch Shell. Currently he coaches individual leaders, consults with large corporations like Shell and Nigerian National Petroleum, and speaks at conferences. Ken lives in Naperville, IL, a Chicago suburb. Ken became a private pilot at age 20, just a few years after first visiting the area in which we flew. Ken welcomes comments at kengraham8@msn.com. To avoid spam filters, please put “Flying” in the subject line.

Flown July 2005. Written in South Africa in Sep 2007
Copyright 2007, Ken Graham
 

Where To Now?

Back to Page One

     Mick Flies Cross-Country All the Way to Florida!

          Ken Flies Almost All the Way to the North Pole!

               Evan Only Makes it as Far as Cedar Falls, Iowa

                    Instead of a Lousy T-Shirt, Evan Buys the Bomber Jacket

                         First-Ever Chanute AFB Air Festival

                              Annual Fly-ins at Grandpa's Farm and Galt

                                   Annual Chicago Air and Water Show

                                        Annual Flight to Tommy George's at Lake Sangchris

                                             Annual Picnic at Clow Hosted by FVFC-E

                                                  Annual Fly-In at Rochelle

                                                       An Excellent Sunset Flight puts it All in Perspective