Six months ago, I had the chance to fly with my friend, Matt, around Vancouver for a little bit. We flew again, but this time, he took us to Powell River, a small city on the Sunshine Coast in BC, which is about 4 hours north west of Vancouver by car. As usual, the flight was very scenic and this time I attempted to take most of the pictures with my friend’s DSLR (my first time actually taking scenery shots with one). The “victim”, as Matt calls it, was the Diamond DA40, a small four-seater airplane.
As we lifted off, I got a good aerial shot of Boundary Bay Airport
We happened to fly over SFU just because air traffic control instructed Matt to fly this way. Doesn’t quite look like the prison that everyone seems to think.
Then we flew over the Burrard Inlet toward North Vancouver.
We flew over the water for the next little while and got a view of the Coast Mountains.
And it turns out, Powell River is not a large city at all. According to Wikipedia, the city has a population of 13,165 (2011).
Since we arrived there on Sunday, there was almost nobody on the streets and nothing was open. We couldn’t go to the tourist info center because of it. It made the small town even smaller. I thought cities completely shutting down on Sundays was a European thing, but apparently not.
It looked like people were still working at the nearby lumber mill though.
We walked around the time randomly for a bit in the freezing cold, and then flew back as the sun set. I managed to capture a picture of rays of light coming through the clouds. If I knew how to work the DSLR better, I might have been able to capture an even better picture.
On the coast of Vancouver Island, I managed to snap a picture of some low lying clouds in the distance over some small islands.
Another shot of the sunset on our way back.
On the way back, Matt even let me take control of the stick for a bit. This time I was a lot more comfortable using the joystick unlike last time. I managed to maintain the desired altitude without the plane screaming at me and I even stayed on the correct heading! This is why Matt’s the pilot and not me.
More photos here