Meekins Air Service

So today I experienced one of the better perks of working at Sheep Mountain Lodge. The lodge does a lot of business with Meekins Air Service. They use the airstrip often for their sight seeing tours.

Anjanette Steer really liked the way this season's employees gelled and our basic attitudes and work ethics. The other night when the owner came in for dinner, Anj talked to them and arranged for us to take some short tours whenever they had the time.

This morning while making a triple batch of pie dough, she told me that I should be at the airstrip by 8:30. It was a great morning. Calm air, few clouds...not what we've seen the past few weeks. There were three of us, and we met the pilot/owner. Well, we have met him many times before...I know he really likes our sourdough pancakes for breakfast and the strawberry rhubarb pie later in the day.

We took off and first headed towards the Tahneta Pass. Creeks on this side of the pass eventually flow into the Matanuska River. On the east side, they flow into the Copper. From this point you can view four of the major mountain ranges in Alaska. Well, from the ground you see two...the Talkeetna and the Chugach. Up in the air you can see the Wrangell and the Alaskan.

We turned north here and we flew over many of the Nelchina herd of caribou. Hundreds, maybe thousands of caribou below us. Sorry, that photo really didn't turn out well. As we turned back, we had a great view of the other side of Sheep Mountain. Here there were many Dall Sheep strolling the ledges and cliffs.

Westward bound we flew over Lion's Head...mentioned in a previous blog...and then out over the Matanuska Glacier. We then returned home to the Sheep Mountain airstrip. It's a little plane, but the trip was smoother than most of the bigger commercial flights I have taken.