We wanted to illustrate the detail and planning that goes into our tours. For illustration purposes, below is a detailed plan for each day of our Palouse tour. Prior to the start of your tour, you will receive its detailed itinerary. To discuss a custom tour, or if you have questions, please contact us.
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Day 1: Pre-Tour - Arrival & Checkin by 1:00 PM
Destination Colfax, WA - Wheatland Best Western Inn (or similar)
Afternoon: Welcome to the gorgeous, picturesque Palouse! As one of the top destination locations in the world for landscape photography, shutterbugs from all over come to capture the raw, natural beauty that only the Palouse region can offer, in all four seasons. This is truly wheat land, with the "amber waves of grain" you’ve heard about … for as far as the eye can see!
Arrange your travel to arrive in Colfax, Washington 1:00 PM PDT. Colfax is a five or six-hour drive from Seattle, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Western Montana. If you’re traveling by air, Spokane, Washington is the closest major airport. There you can rent a car for the leisurely one-hour drive south to Colfax. A Sky Safari Drone Tours Senior Pilot will meet you at your hotel and assist with your check-in.
Day 1: Pre-Tour - 1:30 PM Start
1:30 PM - Pre-Tour Participants: After you settle into your room, we’ll meet in the hotel conference room at 1:30 PM for introductions, and a short drone/controller refresher briefing. This will minimize your flying anxiety by optimizing your drone’s/controller’s safety and control settings.
Be sure to discuss your photographic objectives with our Emmy-Award-Winning Senior Pilot.
Then we’ll adjourn to a local field to practice basic flight maneuvers under the supervision of your Senior Pilots. One-axis, two-axis, three-axis flights. This will brush up your piloting skills. And prepare you for your flight adventures the next day.
By 5:30 or 6:00, we’ll return to the Wheatland Inn and your pre-mission safety briefing.
Dinner: On your own—you’ll find restaurants within walking distance. In Colfax proper, there are a few choices for dinner. Maybe it’s fast casual food (Subway, Zip's, or Rosauers) or Mexican (Los Amigos Restaurant & Bar,) or Chinese (Eddy’s Chinese American). The food’s good, plentiful, and reasonably priced.
Or you may choose to seek out more plentiful restaurants in nearby Pullman, just 13 miles away. Your Senior Pilots will offer suggestions for their favorite local spots.
Day 1: Tour Intro & Mission Briefing - 8:00 PM Start
8:00 PM - For All Participants: Our pre-tour guests will join our full-tour guests in the Wheatland conference room for introductions and to hear a pre-mission briefing for tomorrow's flights.
We’ll review flight plans; the places you’ll fly; and the objectives at each site. We’ll do an equipment check and a quick weather briefing so you’ll know what to expect and discuss any special weather settings for the day.
For each site, we’ll discuss flight hazards and how to mitigate them, and our group safety plan. Then you’ll pack up your flight kit for tomorrow’s adventure: Drone, controller, fully charged spare batteries, sunglasses, sun screen, hat, medications, … whatever you need … so we’re ready to roll before dawn tomorrow.
Day 2: Tour Morning Mission - 4:15 AM Start
4:15 AM - For All Participants: The hotel has breakfast included with your room, but we’ll be gone before they open. We’ll plan to return before it closes for the morning so you can enjoy a nice hot breakfast. Don't worry, we’ll have coffee, tea, and pastries you may take with you in our vehicles as we drive to our first shooting location.
4:30 AM - For All Participants: You read that right! Dawn is approximately 5:00 AM and we want to be at our first shooting location when the sun rises to film during the Golden Hour. You’ll need to be aboard our vehicle(s), with all your equipment, ready to drive away at 4:30 AM. We’ll return to the hotel before breakfast closes at 10:00 AM so you can enjoy your “second breakfast.”
In the minutes before dawn, we’ll drive north from Colfax toward Steptoe Butte. Steptoe Butte is a quartzite island jutting out of the Palouse hills in Whitman County. The 3,600-foot butte is preserved as Steptoe Butte State Park, a publicly owned 150-acre recreation area. A narrow-paved road winds around the butte, leading to a parking area at the summit. The park offers picnicking facilities and an interpretive wayside exhibit. Popular activities include sight-seeing, paragliding, hang gliding, kite flying and photography.
As we drive toward the Butte, there are many fields of wheat, barley, canola, chickpeas, and hops. The morning light and the texture of the land and crops make this a magical time to film from the air. Maybe we’ll see giant farm equipment working the fields, or perhaps crop dusters spraying them.
Next, we’ll leave the pavement and visit an abandoned grain elevator northeast of Steptoe Butte. In the morning light, the sun shows off the various planes of the elevator’s construction, creating depth and texture in our photos. We’ll play with different altitudes and shooting angles. You’re capturing raw footage you’ll be able to use to edit and tell your personal story of the Palouse.
Our last stop for the morning is a short drive from the elevator. We’ll visit, fly, and shoot an abandoned farmhouse. This is especially interesting because the farmhouse itself is an island in the fields of wheat near a huge windfarm installation. The land here is wide open with great sightlines and VLOS seems to go on forever. We can only imagine the hopes of those who built the farmhouses and elevators and wonder why and how the owners’ dreams changed over time. Why they abandoned them. We won’t be shooting the windfarms this morning, but weather permitting, we’ll return near dusk to shoot them.
This is the end of our morning mission. Did we mention we’ll return to the hotel for a late “second breakfast” (time permitting).
10:00 AM - For All Participants: We will convene in the conference room to share raw footage and stills we shot during the morning and learn from each other’s experiences. This is the time to share your work so far, and ask any questions you have.
And for sure, you’ll want to recharge all your drone’s and controller’s batteries.
12:00 PM - For All Participants: Lunch on Your Own: We may choose to go as a group to a local restaurant.
Afterwords, you might appreciate a nap to rest up for our late afternoon/evening mission.
Or maybe, you may want to download the morning’s footage to your laptop and do a little light editing. Our senior pilots will be available to provide editing tips.
Day 2: Tour Afternoon Mission - 3:00 PM Start
3:00 PM - All Participants: Our goal this afternoon is to shoot abandoned farmhouses, an old railroad bridge, fields, and a giant wind farm as the sun lowers itself toward the horizon and the sun’s rays slant across the Palouse. Sunset is between 8:30 and 9:00 PM in mid-summer, maybe the finest time for photographing the Palouse! We’ll depart our hotel and stop by Subway to pick up take-away dinners so as not to miss a moment of light.
Driving north, we'll stop at a neat abandoned barn. The barn itself is interesting and the road that goes past it creates interesting leading lines from the air. By now the breeze may be picking up a little bit and you’ll learn how good your drone is at mastering the breeze. You’ll master how to manage your drone’s flight path and will be amazed how well your drones gimbal stabilizes the footage you’ll be capturing.
Next up, there's an old 130 foot long steel span railroad bridge. This used to be the intersection of the Milwaukee Road rail line and the Spokane & Inland Empire Interurban rail line. The Milwaukee line passed over the Spokane line below. A farm road passed under the Spokane line creating a three-level intersection. The tracks of both line have been removed and their roadway is now part of a trail system. Don't worry, no hiking is required.
Next, we’re off to position ourselves at our final stop of the day, the base of a giant windmill. We'll fly and shoot the wind farm in the pre-sunset golden light. Our plan is to land our drones before sunset, so you won’t be needing a strobe on your drone. But for advanced pilots who may have their strobes with them, ... depending on weather, ... it may be possible to shoot a bit after sunset for some spectacular silhouettes of windmills against a darkening western sky.
Finally, we’ll return to our hotel by 9:30. What a great day it’s been flying and shooting in the magical Palouse. Making new friends. Learning from our Senior Pilots and each other. Sharing the experience and building memories of a lifetime
But now it’s time to recharge drone and controller batteries and ourselves in preparation for tomorrow’s adventure.
Day 3: Tour Morning Mission - 6:00 AM Start
6:00 AM - Breakfast: You’ll enjoy a nice breakfast at the hotel, but you’ll want to eat quickly so as not to miss the early morning light.
Call an Audible? We’re taking it easy on you with the 6:30 AM departure. Remember, Dawn was at 5:00 AM. If most of our guests want to depart earlier, your ever-adventuresome Senior Pilots are willing to start earlier, say at 4:30 AM, like yesterday, or anytime in between. Just let us know!
6:30 AM - All Participants: Our plan is to depart the hotel for our first stop, to shoot an abandoned barn next to some lovely fields, just a short drive from the hotel.
Then we’ll head east to Kamiak Butte. The Butte was named for a famous Yakima Chieftain. Like Steptoe, its hard quartzite rock was once sand on the bottom of an ancient sea. Lifted by powerful tectonic forces, the ocean became this mountainous land and a few of the highest peaks rose far above the surrounding hills. Then lava poured forth from fissures in the earth slowly burying all but the mountain tips. Finally, during the ice age, a blanket of fine silt covered the lava creating the fertile wheatfields of the Palouse. That’s our destination and it’s pretty in a different way from other fields we’ll see.
Finally, we’ll head south through Pullman to an abandoned grain elevator just outside airspace controlled by the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport. It’s a fun and interesting site to fly. It may be a little breezy here, but hey, you’ve got the hang of this.
It would be a grave disservice to call all this more of the same, since every moment the light’s changing. Every moment the shadows show themselves differently. We’ll fly and capture it all.
12:00 PM - All Participants: Grab a lunch and meet in the conference room. We’ll enjoy and learn from each other. We’ll spend the next few hours sharing the clips we shot, celebrating our experience, and our Senior Pilots will field your final questions. Time permitting one of our Senior Pilots will demonstrate some editing techniques we use to take the raw footage and turn it into social-media-ready product.
3:00 PM - Tour Participants: Sadly, your tour must come to an end. You’re really getting the hang of this. Your rapidly advancing skills will let you experiment more, and your flying comfort will have gone way up. Why were you here – to learn and to fly for fun!
For Our Post Tour Participants: Stick around. We'll kick off your session in about 30 minutes!
Day 3: Post-Tour Afternoon Session - 3:30 PM Start
3:30 PM - Post-Tour Participants: For experienced pilots.
We will spend the next two to three hours in the conference room talking with two objectives in mind. First, we talk about cinematography. We'll use the term "camera" from here on, but we mean your drone and its camera, okay? We'll discuss classic cinematography camera movements and how to do them with your camera. How to move your camera for good cinematography. Where to place your camera. The difference altitude makes.
Then we'll turn our attention to waypoint flying. This is a two steps process:
1) Plan and program where you want your camera to fly so you get buttery smooth 1-axis, 2-axis, 3-axis and 4-axis flight paths. Program where your drone is "looking" at each waypoint.
2) Understand your camera's actual flight path through the waypoints. There are some special hazards to recognize and learn to mitigate.
This is quite a lot of material and it will take us two to three hours to cover it.
6:00 PM - Dinner on Your Own: Refuel yourselves and think about what you learned this afternoon. We may choose to go as a group to a local restaurant.
8:00 PM - Post-Tour Participants: For the next hour or so, we want to cover any waypoint (or cinematography) questions you have and conduct the pre-mission briefing for tomorrow's flights.
Get a good night's rest and make sure your drone's and controller's batteries are fully charged for tomorrow morning.
Day 4: Post-Tour Morning Mission - 6:00 AM Start
6:00 AM - Breakfast: You’ll enjoy a nice breakfast at the hotel, but you’ll want to eat quickly so as not to miss the early morning light.
Call an Audible? We’re taking it easy on you with the 6:30 AM departure. Remember, Dawn was at 5:00 AM. If most of our guests want to depart at earlier instead, your ever-adventuresome Senior Pilots are willing to start earlier, say at 4:30 AM or anytime in between. Just let us know!
6:30 AM - All Participants: We'll depart and drive West to visit an abandoned farm complex. There are a couple of houses, and some out-buildings. It's a wide open site with very few hazards. These are subjects that reward both low and high-altitude perspectives. The fields are a textured carpet laid over the rolling hills. A great place to practice your new way-point and cinematography techniques. But mostly it's waypoint-friendly. We've allowed extra time to set up your waypoints and fly them. Maybe adjust them and fly again.
Next we'll drive East to an abandoned grain elevator. Here the complexity of the site will challenge your waypoint skills a bit more. Nothing you haven't trained for. Nothing you haven't practiced already. And there will be greater cinematography opportunities. More of a story to tell, if you will. And again, we've allowed extra time to set up your waypoints and fly them. Maybe adjust them and fly again. Or program new waypoints for a second flight plan and fly it.
Finally we'll return to the hotel arriving about 11:30.
12:00 PM | Post-Tour Participants: We'll want to do a quick mission debrief. What went well, what didn't? What lessons did you learn from the things that didn't go so well? It's important to be self-diagnostic and learn from both our successes and our failures in the future. What successes will you want to store away in your flying bag-of-tricks? We'll also have time to share some clips and for you to talk about them.
3:00 PM - Post-Tour Participants: Your head will be spinning with what you’ve seen, flown, and shot with your flying camera. You’ll revisit in your mind the sights and sounds of this magical place, the Palouse. If we’ve been successful, the experience will have enhanced your life with its beauty and with what you’ve experienced and learned.
Have a safe trip home!
Freedom to Explore on Your Own
Freedom to Explore on Your Own: Make the most of your time in the magnificent Palouse with these suggestions for independent exploration from our Colfax base of operations. We’ve been pretty busy flying. And maybe these explorations will interest you for your time before or after your tour.
Visit Palouse Falls: About 70 miles West, discover this magnificent waterfall at Palouse Falls State Park. We didn’t fly here because of advanced permits and insurance required. But your other camera, whether mobile phone or DSLR, will let you capture the scene beautifully.
Wine & Beer Tasting: The Palouse and the region near Walla Walla are home to a substantial wine making industry with many winetasting opportunities. Much of the world's hops are grown right here and that's spawned a vibrant craft beer community.
Visit Washington State University: 13 miles away, it's the home of the WSU Cougars. In nearby Pullman, WSU has an attractive and sprawling campus. See a visitor map for interesting things to do on campus.
Explore Lake Coeur D'Alene: A little bit further afield is Lake Coeur D'Alene where you'll find Parks, Beaches, Trails, Boating and Wildlife. Check out the opportunities.
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