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Flight From KRVH (San Jose, CA) to Healdsburg Plus Santa Rosa Fire Tour

ArVeeNiner

Well Known Member
It's been a while since I've flown. Between rain, cold, vacation, dead battery, and just plain old regular life, I just couldn't get in the air. Yesterday I was supposed to take my 1973 VW Thing to the local VW show but it filled up 5 minutes before I tried to sign up. I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and go on a flight.

My primary mission was to fly up and see my good friend Dave and make him buy me breakfast. I'm happy to report, it worked!

My route was the typical one I take up there. I go along the east foothills, east of Hayward (where my love for flying started as a kid watching the planes fly over the mall on their way to land at HWD), east of Oakland, over Berkeley, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and finally to my destination. I fly below the SFO Class B and to the east of the OAK Class C.

I decided to get Flight Following both ways since I'm a bit rusty with those skills. I typically take this route and talk to nobody but getting FF was a good exercise.

Here is my flight track. That turn to the right was to avoid a pesky 737 out of KOAK:

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Flying near Richmond, just past Berkeley:

IMG_0514 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Petaluma Airport-Great breakfast can be found on the field at the Two Niner Diner:

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Sneaking over KSTS airspace at 2,700 feet. ATC dropped me shortly after I took this picture:

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There is my destination in the center of the picture. A very sleepy and nice airport.

IMG_0519 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

After breakfast Dave decided to give me a tour of the devastating Tubbs Fire burn area that destroyed some areas of Santa Rosa last year. His family actually evacuated their house on their own and headed north to wait it out. Fortunately, his home and neighborhood was spared. Much of Santa Rosa wasn't so lucky. Very sad.

He took me to the former site of multi million dollar homes. This is near the Fountain Grove area that was devastated:

IMG_0526 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Driveways leading to nowhere:

IMG_0528 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Stairs that lead nowhere:

IMG_0534 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Fire Station 5, gone:

IMG_0532 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

You don't see any construction in the Fountain Grove area. Dave told me that newer areas like this had plastic water supply pipes in the ground. The heat cause them to leech Benzine so they will have to be replaced first. That alone will take 2 years.

To be continued...
 
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Nice flight; thank you for sharing!

I keep my Mooney at Petaluma and will be moving my RV-8 out there this fall. Can't wait to do more flying in the Bay Area!
 
Then we headed over to Coffey Park which is on the other side of highway 101. The fire jumped the freeway, burned down the Kmart, McDonalds, some other businesses, left some standing, but had no mercy for Coffey Park.

Dave said Coffey Park was an older neighborhood from the 50s or 60s:

IMG_0549 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Every driveway marked a life disrupted, memories destroyed. Just heartbreaking:

IMG_0550 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

IMG_0566 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

IMG_0567 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

In the foreground, devastation. In the background, pure luck:

IMG_0568 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

I'm sure the people in the houses that remained untouched were evacuated as well and didn't know if they had anything to come back to. It must have been nerve wracking:

IMG_0571 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Back from the ashes! There were signs of reconstruction in Coffey Park. According to Dave the water supply lines in this area are made of steel so they don't have the issue that Fountain Grove has so they can stay in the ground:

IMG_0553 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

This is a mountain of foundations. There are I think three or more of these mounds. They are being crushed up and will probably end up in the new foundations of the rebuilt neighborhoods:

IMG_0575 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

To be continued...
 
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We decided to lighten things up a bit and head up to Lake Sonoma. I guess this is a very popular spot to stop at on the way up to the lake:

IMG_0578 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

The lake:

IMG_0581 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

IMG_0583 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Then it was back to the airport for the traditional beauty shot:

IMG_0588 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Climbing out of Healdsburg:

IMG_0590 Cropped by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Flew near the Sonoma Raceway, formerly Sears Point, formerly Infinion Raceway:

IMG_0595 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Not a great shot but SF is out there in the haze:

IMG_0597 by Kelly Johnson, on Flickr

Well I'm glad I got finally got a good flight in. It really was a sobering experience to see what happened up close. My heart goes out to those who lost everything. My company matched our donations to help the victims and I think we ended up sending a pretty good amount. Still, that doesn't replace lives and precious photos and momentos.

I just can't imagine having to go through that. I remember seeing that on TV and smelling it in the air from my house. I couldn't believe it just kept going and going. Very sad.
 
Thanks

Great pictures. Thank you for sharing those.

Stairways and driveways to nowhere are kind of creepy.
 
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Thanks Kelly. The devastation of the Valley is depressing indeed. I will be passing via your area with a friend of mine in couple weeks maybe we can coordinate a meetup. I will buy you breakfast. We can even do the Beauty and a Beast shot. Nose to nose. :)


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I would be honored to have you buy me breakfast Vlad! :D Just shoot me a message when you?re in the area!
 
I enjoyed your pics. Thanks for sharing.

As a suggestion for next time, maybe the pics could be scaled down a bit. It's much easier to view them that way. This is a suggestion for all of us.

DR suggests: "Making the image around 900 pixels wide or less preserves the proper word wrapping best on most monitors."

Thanks for the tip. I literally was looking for info on VAF on posting pictures since it?s been a while and I guess I didn?t look hard enough. I?ll get it right next time. It IS a pain to view!
 
Meet Up

I would be interested in meeting when Vlad is in town. It would be nice to discuss maintenance on high time RV's and talk about your travels. I work with Kelly and use my 9A to commute to work.
 
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