Fargo Isn’t Very Warm in February

And here I was complaining about how cold Philadelphia was!

Today, we are flying coast-to-coast…from Philly all the way to Vancouver! Unfortunately, especially with all those headwinds, we had to stop for fuel about half-way. And the best place for that mid-way stop was…Fargo!

In Philly, heading to the airport was a cold and drizzly endeavor.

We hitched a ride with the FBO van, then borrowed a car to make a quick dash to McDonald’s for some unhealthy breakfast. If a hotel charges for internet, there’s a pretty high chance that they do not serve any semblance of complimentary breakfast!

But today will be a long day…about three hours each leg. So starting out right with some breakfast was the best decision that we made all morning!

I don’t really like fast food breakfast. None of those McMuffin things for me, thank you! But I got their breakfast burrito meal and swapped out coffee for some orange juice.

This was the best part of the meal. I love orange juice!

Soon we were back at the FBO and waiting for our passengers to arrive. They know that we have a long day ahead of us, so we left at 9:00 AM this morning.

This is the FBO lobby. Pretty nice, huh? It was empty because it was too cold for most people to want to fly today.

This is the reception area, and this nice gal was super cool to us. She was here when we landed two days previously, and she helped us get ready to depart by ordering our fuel, etc. We had very wonderful service at Atlantic Aviation in Philly!

I gazed at Gladys from the warmth of inside…not wanting to go back out there until it was absolutely necessary. They let the passengers drive onto the ramp, so loading luggage was at least a little easy. Thank goodness! It was rather chilly today!

Soon we were braving the drizzle and winds to depart for our long trip to the west. Goodbye, East Coast. At least for a few weeks, anyway!

Rain makes seeing out the windows a little difficult at times. This will be the worst weather that we have to battle today. Fargo, while stinkin’ cold, is forecasted to be mostly clear. And Vancouver won’t have rain until tomorrow, after we’re safely on the ground.

On our climb today, we definitely had the engine and wing heat on to prevent any ice from forming. The conditions were perfect for ice to adhere to the airplane today…cold, wet, and a cold surface (like an airplane) soaring through the sky!

But we beat it all by turning on the engine-bleed heaters. None of that icing stuff for us, thank you!

I don’t know about you, but it looks pretty cold to me! Look at all that snow and ice on Lake Erie! Yuck!

Even with a pretty winglet in the picture, it still looks cold out there. I’m glad that we have heat inside this airplane!

I was excited for our fuel stop today, since it was just seventy miles south of my old college stomping grounds. In fact, I’ve flown to Fargo a time or two to practice approaches and do some cross-country stops. It kind of feels like coming home, in a sense.

But it’s way more fun to return in a jet.

And it’s also nice knowing that I will only have to endure the ridiculous temperatures for as long as it takes the line guys to single-point fuel my airplane!

And I can be very helpful and motivating fuel guys when it’s twelve degrees outside.

We were told to expect the visual approach to Runway 18, but the clouds never cleared enough over the airport for us to see it. So they vectored us out a little wide to intercept the localizer to track inbound for the runway.

We were given vectors towards KENIE, which is the final approach fix for the ILS approach for Runway 18. I’m glad that we got vectors, because we didn’t see the runway until just a few miles away!

Supposedly, there is a town named Fargo down there somewhere. It’s hard to tell with all these cute little puffy clouds in the way.

Finally we broke through and had the runway in sight. It’s fun to talk to the Tower guys…since all but two of them went to UND for their Air Traffic Control schooling.

Yes, the University of North Dakota really does do it all. It is hands-down the best place to attend flight school!

Nope, not biased at all. Why do you ask?

Go Sioux!

It was so cold here. I didn’t even take very many pictures because I was worried that it would break my camera.

Oh yeah, and because I was busy getting fuel so we could be on our way again to thaw out! Fargo isn’t on my top list of places to visit in February, I’ll tell you that right now.

But they do have Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. We drove down a few times  over the years just to experience all of that glory. It’s been proven that the hot sign being on will help in student performance during Finals Week.

That is ice on the ramp. It was lots of fun. And even with three shirts and two coats, I was still a little chilly as we got fuel. Luckily. they figured out that we didn’t want to stay long. Our quick-turn stop took less than twenty minutes.

We got our two passengers back on board and were off again!

Next stop…beautiful Vancouver!