Short Hop to Customs at Boeing Field

It was a wonderful, (though cold, soggy, and windy), weekend in Vancouver. I had a lovely view from my hotel room, and a mall right across the street. What more could a girl possibly want?!

But soon, it was time to be on our way. After nine full days on the road, visiting cities like Miami, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Vancouver, it’s time to finally see the face of my sweet hubby again.

But not before I admire this pretty Challenger 300. Wowsas!

This FBO was excellent, and we would certainly return again.

I wish that I could say that we were heading home non-stop, but for some reason, Customs at our home airport is closed every Tuesday and Wednesday. How is that even legal?!

So, we needed to stop along the way to clear Customs before heading home for real.

We opted to stop at Boeing Field in Seattle. We’ve visited their Customs shack before. They were quick and professional, and we were hoping for the same treatment today so that we could be on our way again!

Goodbye, Vancouver Tower!

Roger.

Leaving Vancouver, we ran into  a layer of clouds and a little icing.

It’s February, so that makes sense.

We fired up our awesome anti-icing equipment to make it through the clouds until we broke out on top.

And when we finally did get beyond the icing clouds, we enjoyed gorgeous views for the entire half-hour flight to Seattle.

You know, the Seattle that is one of my favorite places in the whole wide world?

The mountains are just incredible up here. I am always blown away at how tall they truly are! I forget that other places have giant Rockies as well!

Holy cow. Look at those beauties!

And I love how you can see the Puget Sound sneaking in from the Pacific Ocean. With the low-laying clouds, it almost looks like something from a dream, huh?

Or an awesome view outside my office window.

This is probably my favorite picture from the short flight.

Way far in the distance is one of my favorite places, too. Can you hear me, Bremerton? I love you!

We finally had a cloudy Seattle in sight. It’s hard to see, but that doesn’t matter to me. I still love this place.

I just found out that we’re going back in a few weeks. Yippeeeee!

We descended down to enter our final approach for Boeing Field in Seattle.

And we flew right past downtown on our way to landing today. You can even see Boeing Field in the far right-hand side. And, because I’ve been there about sixty times, I can even figure out where Renton Field is located on the southern tip of that lake in the distance.

They finish Boeing 737s there before delivering them at Boeing Field. This whole area screams Boeing!

There were so many pretty peninsulas on our way to the airport today. So much to see out these windows!

A view from the air is always the best view.

Seattle is a major shipping port, and we passed several loading docks that proved that.

Add a winglet, and the view gets even better!

Hello, Boeing Field! We had to keep an eye out for a tiny airplane on his final approach for the parallel runway to the left. That tiny runway is hard to see, let alone a tiny airplane hidden in the hills of Seattle.

Our Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS) comes in really handy in situations like this!

And soon we were on the ground and taxiing to the Customs ramp. We planned ahead with fuel and loaded on enough in Vancouver to just continue on our way after being cleared for Customs. No fuel needed here!

Just twenty minutes later, after all of our passports checked out to be authentic, we were heading out again!

I didn’t dare take a picture of the Customs officer who came to our airplane. He was really nice and polite, but you just don’t want to risk any bad decisions with these guys. They have the ability to make our lives miserable by unloading all of our luggage and keeping us for hours.

Do you have any idea how much luggage we had after being on the road for nine days?!

We we were all really nice to him, and he fell for our charm.

After he finished with us inside the airplane and did his walk-around with the drug-detecting machine, we fired up the engines and headed to the same runway that we had just landed about fifteen minutes previously. Awesome!

And there was no shortage of neat airplanes to see as we headed to the runway.

And here is the Boeing facility on the field! I have been here before. In fact, I sat in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner here! Eek! But I couldn’t take any pictures, so no one ever believes me…

We were so fast in getting out of here that the same little guy that we were looking for when we landed was still in the traffic pattern practicing his landings!

This was the first little private airplane that I ever flew in…a Diamond Katana. My Mama bought a day camp for me at a local university’s flight program. And then I got a whole half-hour flight in one of these little guys.

It was magical.

But Gladys is so much cooler than a little Katana. Man, I’m blessed!

And, as a parting gift from Seattle’s Boeing Field today, we got to see this monstrous wonder! Please don’t ask me what it is…or what it does. I have no idea! But it was so fun to see. It even looked like it had a rotating nose like the old Concordes!

What a great stop in my beloved Seattle.

Now we can head home!