Hello. Corey Rust here for Envi Adventures.
I had a blog once in 2007. It was good. It had a vast audience of 7. It’s hard not to look smug with stats like that. So this is somewhat of a return to my online journalistic career at which I never made any money. But I digress. While my attempts at poorly crafted blog humor fizzled out about as quickly as it started, in the same period of time I started consistently training to earn my pilots license. It was a dream come true!
I loved it. I couldn’t get enough. Long had I dreamt of controlling an airplane by myself. Even with a competent and wonderful instructor by my side throughout, it was a liberation I hadn’t felt except for that first time mowing the lawn independently at age 11, and that doesn’t even come close to comparing.
Now, to state the obvious, it’s 10 years later. My ultimate goal of becoming an airline pilot didn’t come to fruition, I didn’t take over for David Letterman when he retired, and humans decided Pluto didn’t qualify as a planet anymore. How about that for a downgrade? Meanwhile, Envi Adventures has started, and that’s kind of a big deal for me.
In the beginning of this entrepreneurial journey, I got a lot of less than enthusiastic head nods saying “Oh, neat.” Some would say “scenic flight businesses never succeed” citing weather, lack of interest, and so on. Really? So all of those airplanes flying in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Alaska carrying cameras and people don’t succeed? Pish posh. But, here we are and I don’t intend to go anywhere anytime soon.
In the first month of operation, we’ve had a lot of smiling faces and a lot of great pictures shared by people from Oregon all the way from Germany and Australia…and it’s only the beginning.
No matter the conditions, people LOVE to see the Columbia River Gorge from the air. There is something magical about seeing Multnomah Falls plus every other waterfall you’ve heard of and countless others you didn’t know existed from the air. It’s like flying through the landscape of some epic tale only seen in movies or read in books.
With summer around the corner, we’re gearing up for you to join us, and we’re thrilled to welcome the world to Oregon. I personally thank you for supporting Envi Adventures and my dreams of building a fun, exciting business with a unique culture attached to it. Ideas are powerful, but without people to support it, it’s just part of an imagination.
-Corey
