Yellowstone, Idaho and Oregon

It rains intermittently all night and the weather is still marginal when we wake up. We're given a restriction on the crew car: Get back by 7:30. Given all the stuff to do in Guernsey this isn't much of a restriction. We get a great breakfast at the other restaurant and head over to the airport. The other flight arrives and they take the car. I commence looking at weather and resolve to wait for the weather to improve a bit before departing.
When we depart the clouds are around 1200 feet above the ground and there are plenty of holes between them.
I decide to stay below the clouds for a bit. This is not much of a risk since the holes between clouds very common leaving me plenty of options to get up and out of danger if necessary. The landscape is really amazing. Dry with lots of Mesas and small canyons along the way. For the first 50 miles we stay under the clouds at about 1500 feet. Normally I'd be guzzling fuel and going slow at 1500 above the ground but here the ground is a around 6000 above sea level so I'm in thin air at 7500 feet, air that my craft passes through easily, at normal fuel burn and good speed. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too!
After a while I can see ahead and it looks like the Bighorns are "obscured" as they say or in the clouds. We climb above them and to the north we can see that the 13,000 foot peaks are covered in snow despite the fact that it's September. We climb to 12,500 to get above the clouds that encapsulate the lower section of the Bighorns where we pass over. Because of the cloud cover we really don't even get to see them. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it best:

"Navigating by compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is very well, it is very dashing, but -- you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."

Eternity will be avoided on this trip!

After a sun drenched stint above the sea of clouds we descend between them into rough turbulent air. We land at Cody in another stiff breeze that is cheerfully down the runway and prepare for crossing the Rockies.

The first time I did it, crossing the Rockies was a big deal, really challenging. This time I'm not worried at all. Unlike the east coast the weather is great from Cody all the way to the Pacific. Preparation for the crossing amounts to a solid lunch and telling my dad how to use the portable oxygen that we end up not using on this flight.

Interestingly this flight take us over Yellowstone, near the Grand Tetons, which I knew I was going to pass over. The thing I wasn't aware of was what my friend Mike calls the Saw Tooth Range. Idaho ends up having some of the most rugged terrain I've ever flown over. Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming all have very rugged terrain but most of the time there is always a flat area within gliding distance that would turn into an airport if my engine decides to stop turning money into noise. Well, in this area of Idaho there were 150 mile stretches with no suitable landing areas, nothing, nada! Steep mountains leading down to narrow valleys that have small stream at thier apex. No place to land. Unfortunately this area was also marked by continuous turbulence and we didn't get any pictures. As we passed over we saw many small back country air strips that even the idea of flying in an out of gave me the willies: Short runway(strips more like) at high altitude make for challenging flying. If anything goes wrong the options are few and unforgiving! We fly about 2 hours and land at a small airport in central Idaho, get some inexpensive fuel and motor another few hours to Aurora, Oregon. We get a great view of Mt Hood on the way to Aurora. We can first see it about 200 miles away which for the West is pretty standard. Mt hood is so enormous that it looms huge in the window, endlessly, seeming like we are sitting still. It is an awesome site. Further away but still in easy view are Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Jefferson, and Mt Ranier. Fantastic vista everywhere you look.
Aurora happens to be where Vans Aircraft is located, the manufacturer of my airplane Kit. We landed well after they are closed but tomorrow we'll stop by and get a tour along with a little assistance in fixing my tail wheel which has been misbehaving. The fix turns out to be easy, we get a short tour and we are on our way to McMinnvile to see the Sprucegoose.

Onward, Upward, Westward... Guernsey, WY

We depart Clinton, Iowa, get a few shots of the Landing Ship on the Mississippi and point the nose West. The weather forecast for our route isn't particularly good. We are flying above an undercast for large portions of the flight. While tooling along above the clouds I got an eerie picture of a TV tower poking up through the clouds. This is why it is almost always better to fly high than grovel between the clouds and the ground. you can almost bet eventually the ground will rise up or the clouds will sink down leaving you no place to go but in the clouds or ground. This is a death sentence for a pilot who isn't trained to cope with cloud flying. I'm trained and ready for it but I avoid the clouds when I can, it just makes dealing with unexpected problems much easier. Dealing with a dead engine is difficult enough, dealing with it in the clouds is just no fun. Spend as little time as possible in the clouds and the chances of dealing with a failure in the clouds become minuscule.

The first leg takes us to Valentine, Nebraska where there is cheap fuel and not much else. This area is called the "Sand Hills" and it is sandy. We land, it is cold and starts to rain before dad finishes fueling the plane. I really want to make a go for Cody Wyoming. This is right on the eastern edge of Yellowstone Park. Unfortunately, as you can see in the picture, it's raining. Rain isn't an altogether show stopper but it's cold, between us and Cody are the Bighorn mountains(Heard of Custer anyone?) To get above the Bighorn's we'll have to fly high where it's colder which when there is lots of moisture means ice. Ice is bad!

I spend a bunch of time pouring over the Radar maps, automated reports from stations along the way and it doesn't look all that bad getting to a place about 80 miles north of Cheyenne called Camp Guernsey. The web page for the airport says great things:
Crew car
Cheap fuel
Oregon trail ruts

I call flight service and get a no, hell no from them on flying visually. Guernsey is on this side of the Bighorns and hence won't require me flying above the freezing level if I have to get in the clouds. I wait for a break in the weather, depart and manage to get to Guernsey in great weather. we land and it sure is windy. It took me by surprise and I had to take a second shot at landing. Ole' dad takes it in stride. The nice airport manager give us the crew car and we're on our way.

You have to wonder about any town that has an elevation far greater than population... two hotels and two restaurants and not much else. In many towns going and looking at ruts would seems pretty dull but in Guernsey this is prime time stuff. It turns out that the wagon trains actually wore through the rock and made incredibly deep ruts. I have no idea how the middle got cleared out but it did. The picture makes them look a lot narrower than they are. Weird.

By the time we decide to get some dinner we are limited to the local bar and each have a burger. It's actually pretty decent. head back to the Sage Brush Motel and get a good night sleep.