Al was born in Alaska and has been stuck there ever since. As a teenager, he got a ride in the back seat of a Super Cub to a remote hunting camp in the Wrangell Mountains, which convinced him he needed wings. He went off to Oregon for college with a plan get smart and make money so he could afford them.
There he met Beth, his tolerant wife. She thoughtfully gave him a pilot’s logbook for Christmas, apparently without realizing that the $10 book was a money gobbling monster. There are now two and one half planes in the Clayton collection. They include a Cessna 182 which is shared with a partner, a Cessna 170B that had been wrecked and was restored by Al and his friend Rob Tasker, and an experimental SuperCub, built by lifelong Alaskan Kirk Ellis.
