For the forty-first crossing I was trying to get through the northern Rockies between Seattle and Billings, Montana. This was the view on ForeFlight on the morning I was departing. That storm, which stubbornly sat over the Rockies for three days, dumped so much rain on the Yosemite Valley that it washed away a bridge and did historic damage. As far as I could tell the weather was stopped there by the heat wave that was covering the inland portions of the nation.
There was nothing terrible in that forecast. It was a four hours flight and it looked like three hours would be in the clouds. the plane has two and a half hours of protection from icing, and this looks like it would have exhausted the supply. The plane was most likely capable (and there are places to land if I felt continuing was unwise), but I couldn’t get excited about doing flying into it. So I headed south. This sort of entry is more like the Photographic Logbook that my friend Chris keeps. I should have taken more pictures.
After a dinner with Rudy the night before, I flew out of San Carlos to Las Vegas (Henderson) for breakfast, on to Albuquerque for a nap. Wichita for an early supper and pressed on to St. Louis for the night. The plane flew an excellent GPS approach to landing that night, in VFR conditions, but the help was appreciated. That is now our longest day of flying, almost 1,600 nautical miles from 7am to 10pm (local times, but still 11 hours is a long duty day).
In the morning hopped to Dayton for a Cinnabon, Scranton for fuel, and then landed (current) home field at Norwood, Massachusetts. Great weather all the way and usually a tailwind better than 15 knots.
