Chapter 11

(Day 7, 8:00 a.m., Anchorage Alaska)

Grif and Tara went to his bank to deposit the two checks, which made him an instant millionaire. Tara suggested that they use it to buy Grif another plane, and then buy a home they could call their own after they learned how demanding the job with Sheila and Tracy was to be.

One of the homes like the AVWCC was building for one of the Owens' newer pilots appealed to Tara, and she wished to speak to the designer about it when they visited the wilderness lodge the next afternoon. Tara reminded Grif that he might get his salmon fishing trip after all and she would be with him this time. The Aurora View Lodges had become one of the top destinations for Silver Salmon in Alaska since their inception, in spite of heavy limitations throughout Norton Sound as the result of overfishing by foreign commercial vessels.

The job of being a corporate pilot appealed to Grif far more than flying an airliner in the post 9-11 world. He cashed out around $5,000 at the bank, and one of the items that they would buy before leaving town was a laptop computer to carry with them at all times. When they were done at the bank, Tara picked out the computer while Grif purchased the fishing tackle, vests, and waders for everyone and last but not least some good 100% DEET insect repellent!

Tara and Grif finished earlier than they thought and went on to the Hotel Captain Cook to meet the others. Tracy had been released from the hospital and wanted to go to Fairbanks to tell Ricky to his face that his lawyer was coming out of his own account. He was being held without bail in the Fairbanks Jail. His public defender had made several calls to get someone to bail him out until his trial date, but had only succeeded in getting his trial moved up to the following Friday morning.

Both Tracy and Kathy denied him the bail money to spring him, and when she got there, Tracy wanted to tell Ricky to take a plea, and serve his time. Kathy wouldn't even speak to him. She had a clear brace across her front teeth, where her brother had kicked them loose, and her side hurt from the cracked ribs he had caused her. (Kathy had been treated and released in Fairbanks when the troopers had picked them up form Walker Lake.)

They arrived in Fairbanks a little after two in the afternoon aboard the Caravan, and Tracy rented a car to go and meet with Ricky and his lawyer. Ricky was crazy with hate and pledged to kill his sister and aunt when he got out. Tracy then left immediately, washing her hands of Ricky and saying that he would be cut from her will, and any future family business. She and Kathy rejoined Sheila and the others to go and see the Chena River Inn.

When the prosecutor arrived to offer Ricky plea bargain, what was offered as a 90-day sentence, was withdrawn because of the verbal threats Ricky continued to make to kill his aunt, and sister in the presence of the Assistant DA. His lawyer advised him to shut up, and Ricky finally did, after telling his PD to screw himself. The Public Defender bargained that back down to 120 days, at which time Ricky had to admit what he did before the judge, and express remorse. Unfortunately, he opened his smart mouth one too many times during the allocution, and the judge added another 30 days to it. Ricky was going to be in jail for the next five months.

While they were in Fairbanks, Tracy, Sheila and their kids, went to see the Inn that Sheila inquired about on the Chena River. Tracy and Sheila visited with the owners and had dinner in the restaurant. They both liked the inn, and leaned towards buying it that Friday.

Grif and Tara rode herd on the kids, including Kathy, showing them around Fairbanks until it was time to meet Tracy and Sheila again. When they met again at the airport, Grif filed the flight plan for a different route of flight seeing to Denali Park, and some other mountains and glaciers, before going to Nenana for the night, where they prepared to go out to the wilderness lodge the next morning. Sheila wanted to take the new plane back out to Walker Lake, but Grif offered they do that on the return trip since it was only be a slight detour from Shaktoolik, and someone from the AVWCC might like to see the site too.

Grif and Tara had picked up the license that morning, and were starting to look for someone to perform their wedding ceremony. This was not exactly an emergency, but if they happened across someone they would inquire. The JP in Nenana had gone on vacation and the ministers of the churches were nowhere to be found. They too gave up and went to bed.

Tara was quite content to sleep with Grif's arm around her. They would be married soon, and she wouldn't be hypocritical about it. After all, she and Grif had slept together in the same tent before. That is what they did though was sleep.

(Day 8, 8-26-04, 8:05 a.m., Nenana Municipal Airport)

When they returned to the Nenana Airport the next morning, they ran into Rudy, who told them they were early and he didn't have their pay yet. Rudy turned to walk away, but looked back over his shoulder to see the two families board the new Caravan 850 Amphibian, and his two former pilots climb into the cockpit.

The last thing Rudy heard, before Grif fired the turbine engine up, was Tara shouting, "Go get your Beaver, we'll have a drag race!"

In level flight, the Cessna 208 Caravan was almost a hundred knots faster, even without the Honeywell engine upgrade. Rudy had already regretted firing his two best pilots; now there was salt in the wounds. He initially was using the termination as food for thought for Grif and Tara and planned to hire them back to share time with her Maule. He was learning a hard lesson, "Be careful that what comes out of your mouth, before it is said. Words have often lasting and unintended consequences."

They departed Nenana at a heading of 249 degrees, and a cruising altitude of 6,500 feet. The flight would take less than two hours. The route roughly followed the Yukon River, out of reach of the low mountains on either side.

(Aurora View Wilderness Lodge N64 39.83', W160 7.99', airport elev .614' ASL)

They arrived at the wilderness lodge at 10:00, and the attendant directed them to the guest parking area. The main lodge building was now the home of owner and Founder, Gray Owens and his wife Regina, their seventeen-year-old daughter Danielle, and Gina's grandfather. The once primary fishing and hunting lodge site was now used mainly as the Owens personal Paradise.

Sheila said, "Now this is what we need at the lake, an airport like this. Look at the hangars, will you. Oh, look Tracy. This place is gorgeous! I wonder if he would sell it?"

Grif heard since he had shut the engine off and was moving to help everyone out. "I doubt there is anyway you can buy this place Sheila. You saw the brochures. This was the man's lifelong dream. Those are not usually for sale."

The main fishing operation, and four of the double occupancy cottages had been moved down to a site on a bend in the Shaktoolik River, about nine miles from the village of the same name. That attested to the type of construction that the AVWCC did, since there was no longer any trace of where the four cabins once stood.

Gary wanted to show that part of it, and emphasize the portability of the cabins while he took Tracy and Sheila on a tour of the facilities, the girls and Tommy would be entertained by Danielle, her fiancée, Jesse, the airstrip attendant and one of the pilots, and one of the regular guides.

They could fish or canoe on the five-acre beaver pond south of the lodge or the river. Two could go horseback riding with the guide, as most of the horses and a smaller non-insulated barn were also at the Aurora View Fishing Lodge for the summer.

The women were keenly interested in the barn, since horses were one of the things Tracy definitely wanted at their lodge. Moses Chilkut had come up from the AVFL to help answer any questions. Moe as he was called for short, was the engineer, and primary designer for the AVWCC. While Moe explained the insulated barn and its layout to Tracy, Gary advised Sheila that the hay and feed was flown in from Anchorage, and thus was a notable expense.

The barn housed thirteen horses during the winter months, and even during the coldest part of the winter, never dropped below freezing inside. This was due to the way the heating system, powered by the windmill generators worked. That particular barn could hold twenty horses, but part also was home to Gina and Danielle's reindeer team to pull their modified sleigh in the winter.

Inside the main lodge, Gary and Gina showed them the four bedrooms upstairs, with the hot tub on the observation deck with a retractable awning. It had every convenience of a modern home in the city, except being close to schools and shopping. However, the Aurora View Wilderness Corporation solved that with weekly supply flights, and a shopping service for the ninety-some-odd employees to order what they needed online, and the supply or cargo flights would deliver it to the several remote sites.

Gina, a former schoolteacher, explained how they had home schooled several of the kids and her daughter Danielle. It was a simple matter and there was a plethora of information about it online. Home schooling allowed the kids some flexibility in their schedule should they also work part-time.

"Your lodge will have to be re-supplied by air," noted Gary. "If you don't have the plane for as large an operation as you say, we will be happy to extend our service to you once a week, with one of our dedicated cargo planes."

Sheila started to say no, but Grif was nodding "yes." He and Tara would have enough going on without having to make two trips each day in the Caravan to Fairbanks to shop. There would be daily guests flight trips for the short-term people, and a few one-night stays too, in addition to the weekend flights. That didn't even take into consideration the fact that they would be chasing after Tracy and Sheila. A weekly supply flight on one of the cargo planes was a reasonable offer, and he explained that it would not pay her to buy her own plane just to bring groceries out with.

With the tour at the wilderness lodge done, they would fly over to the big lodge on the lower river in the new Caravan, where the first of the insulated fiberglass log siding had been installed, and a side trip to see the progress on Dylan Clark's home. Although the AVFL had two runways, a 2300-foot north-south one and an 1800-foot east west one, they were not suitable for the jet. Sheila and Tracy marveled that so many logs had been used to build the lodge and cabins, and asked if they were from clearing the airstrip.