Leg 1: Chino, CA to Provo, UT -- 2:40, 28.2 gallons
All afternoon yesterday (Friday) I fretted about the horrible weather cast across the central US. There were bad-ass thunderstorms just clustered all over Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska. Yippekaye. It was a huge disappointment. Serves me right for trying to do flight planning months in advance! How could I have predicted the terrible weather parked right along my preferred route of flight?!
Anyway, several people suggested that I fly up through Salt Lake City and cross north of the Rockies, and just stay to the north if I had to in order to avoid the weather. Sounds like a plan...
So Saturday morning at 5:30 rolled around, and Jen and I managed to get everything into the truck and on the way to the airport by 6am. We were only half an hour behind schedule at that point. I had checked the weather before leaving the house, and it still looked horrible in Kansas. There goes our first overnight stop. Who knows where we'll end up. All I knew is that we were heading to Provo, Utah first, and we'd just see from there.
Chino and the whole LA basin was socked in with a marine layer, so I'd have to make an IFR departure if I wanted to get out of here before about 11am. There was no way we were gonna wait that long. So, I filed the IFR flight plan to VFR on top of Paradise VOR. We got the plane loaded and started up around 6:30am for a 6:45 scheduled departure. The plan was to try SoCal on 135.4 first, and if I couldn't reach them from the ground, I'd have to call TRACON via phone to get my clearance and void time. By the time I got done with my runup, I gave tower a call just in case there was anybody home at that early hour...fortunately I got a response! The guy working tower said that if I wanted to wait a few minutes he could facilitate the IFR clearance for me. Bitchin. Absolutely. So sometime just before 7am I got the clearance and we blasted off.
We were clear of clouds climbing through about 3000'. I cancelled IFR as I turned northeast and headed toward Las Vegas. On the other side of the hills we were free of the marine layer, and it was clear up ahead as far as the eye could see.
I had no idea what kind of ground speeds we'd be seeing on this trip. All of my flight planning had been done with 170 knots in mind to be conservative. I was pleasantly surprised that we had a slight tailwind on that first leg. We were doing anywhere between 192 and 200 knots the whole way.
After passing over Las Vegas, I turned toward Utah and headed pretty much direct to Provo. After another hour or so we came into that area and the terrain rose a fair bit. We cruised at 9500' the whole way no problem. Here you can see the view of the lake as we approached Provo.
Here's a slightly closer shot. After that I got busy looking for traffic -- lots of VFR traffic on unicom at Provo on a Saturday morning.
We landed at PVU after about two hours and forty minutes. We topped off, taking on 28.2 gallons. The FBO we used was Advantage Aviation, which had the cheapest fuel on the field ($3.06 per gallon including tax and stuff, yikes!). They were kind and helpful. I used their computer to check weather across the north central U.S. It still looked pretty bad through Kansas and Nebraska. I used WeatherTap exclusively for radar and satellite views, prog charts, etc. I am fully in love with that site at this point. The animated radar views with satellite superimposed absolutely kick butt. Anyway, I decided that Rapid City, South Dakota would be a decent next stop.
We hopped back in the plane and I went to start it up...but the starter wouldn't engage. Great... The starter contactor would click away until the cows came home, but the starter itself wouldn't budge. Well, I had seen this before on other people's planes, and it was usually either a faulty connection or just heat soaked. Time to pull the cowl. Nice...we've barely gotten started and I'm already pulling the cowl.
With the cowl removed I checked the connections and everything looked absolutely fine. I tried it again but it didn't respond. Ok, let's just wait a bit and see if it responds after cooling off. The starter, like everything under the cowl, was hot to the touch. Jen and I killed time...she broke out the word puzzle book, and I talked to all the people who stopped by to check out the shiny aluminum funky looking plane that had its cowl off. After about 40 minutes, and after trying every 10 minutes or so, the starter finally kicked when I hit the button. Great! Let's get going. I put the cowl back on and started it up. After almost getting lost trying to find the active runway, we took off out of Provo.
Leg 2: Provo, UT to Casper, WY -- 1:45, 17.1 gallons
Departing Provo, there's basically one good "low" pass out of there just to the east. You can't miss it.
We climbed back up to 9500' and stayed there again with no terrain issues. I just skirted up toward Fort Bridger before turning eastward. The hills around Provo are absolutely gorgeous. You get the green trees and the bit of snow up top.
After going through the pass, I caught some photos of the view to the south, looking off the right wing. There were a number of buildups out there, as forecast and as I had seen on the radar.
Here's another shot of the taller mountains to the south and some buildups over 'em.
Another shot of the same. It was clear on our route, but we were definitely heading much more north of where I had ideally wanted to be. Oh, well. At least we're heading kinda east. We'll get to Chicago eventually.
On this leg we started picking up some more speed. We were doing between 200 and 210 knots, and I was loving it!
That's about the last photo I took that day, and you can see it was kinda fuzzy. We had started picking up some light to occasional moderate turbulence, and then it pretty much went continous and worsened. I was fine, albeit annoyed, but Jen wasn't doing so well. She had taken some non-drowsy Dramamine before leaving Chino, but she hadn't taken any at Provo. It was definitely catching up with her, and when I saw her pull out the sic-sac it was clearly time to land. She was trying to be cool about it, but I insisted that we stop at the next convenient point...which ended up being Casper, Wyoming. We got thrashed around all the way to the ground, and pretty much as soon as we landed Jen felt better. We decided to grab some lunch and top off the fuel while we were there.
At Casper, Trajen Flight Support took care of us by giving us a crew car. They warned us that driving that car is almost worse than not having a car at all, and to be careful on the hills, but we made do. Kept the pedal to the metal and the thing did just fine! We drove into "downtown Casper" (if you can really call it that) and ate burgers at a "Peaches" restaurant, which is basically a modified McDonald's across the street from a Taco John's. The buildings and decor were the same, but I guess they're not into big name brands there. Boring as all hell, and the weather was catching up with us...let's get the heck out of here.
Leg 3: Casper, WY to Minneapolis, MN -- 3:00, 31.0 gallons
After lunch and a fresh dose of Dramamine for Jen, we were ready to head back up into the bumps again and head east for who knows where. But...not so fast...the starter yet again didn't kick over. Great. Why did it decide to start failing NOW of all times? It must know I'm nowhere near my hangar... It had been over an hour since we landed, so it had some time to cool off, but the engine compartment was still pretty hot. This time instead of pulling the cowl we just sat there, and I retried it every five minutes or so. Eventually the thing responded. This is gonna get annoying...but at least we're moving along.
Our original planned stop at Rapid City, SD was now too close to be a useful stop as far as fuel and range were concerned, so I figured we'd head to eastern South Dakota or maybe Iowa if weather permitted. As we took off out of Casper, a nasty little rainstorm ended up pushing in. We still hadn't had a drop of water on the plane yet, and I wasn't gonna let that change if I could help it.
We initially climbed up to 7500' and skirted beneath a broken layer, and soon we climbed up and over that layer to 11500', where the air was clear, cool, and smooth. Looking to the southeast, we could see buildups in northern Nebraska, and that continued as we headed across South Dakota. Eventually the cloud deck rose to meet us at 11500', and briefly we climbed up to 12000' to stay on top of it. Shortly thereafter I found a nice big break and pointed the nose down through it. The bases of the clouds were around 7000' or so, so we just skirted underneath 'em at about 5500'. As I looked ahead on the map and played with the GPS, Minneapolis seemed like it would be a good spot to stop with respect to range and fuel reserves. What came to mind was FCM, Flying Cloud Airport. I had been there once before...that's where I bought my Mooney 201 several years ago. It seemed like a decent place at the time, despite the absolutely dreary late winter weather. We beelined for FCM and made it there within about three hours.
The day had definitely caught up with us. I haven't really commented much on what we did during those eight or so hours of flying, but I was fairly tired by the time we got to Minneapolis. While I hand-flew the plane (I still don't have an autopilot...I know, I know...), Jen either slept or read or did word puzzles. I spent time looking forward on the charts, calling FlightWatch to give PIREPs and get current weather, etc. Not having a specific plan, but rather just avoiding weather and still trying to make solid forward progress, was definitely more stressful than flying when you know exactly where you're going. For me it was a constant juggling act with picking landing spots, calculating fuel burn, and monitoring weather activity via conversations with flight service. It wasn't hard to see where the weather was -- just look off the right wing -- but I wanted to stay on top of the direction in which it was moving.
I was slightly disappointed that we had to divert to the north, but in the end it actually worked out great. Since our goal was to make it to Chicago (technically Gary, Indiana) by the second day, that was now easily within our reach. It would just be one relatively short leg to get there from Minneapolis. Whether it would be clear when we got there was still up in the air.
Anyway, we pulled onto the ramp at ASI/Modern Aero at Flying Cloud Airport, which is the same FBO where I bought that old Mooney. They took good care of us. They gave us a free crew car for the night, set up our hotel arrangements, and offered us hangar space. The hangar was 50 bucks a night, but I figured I'd spring for it in case the weather moved in overnight. The last thing I wanted was the plane sitting out in the rain and having to load it in the rain in the morning. Since the crew car was free for the night, I figured I'd cough up the 50 bucks for the peace of mind. You have to remember that other than a couple of short overnight trips within California (where the sun always shines), this was the first real overnight stay away from home. You gotta pardon me if I was being a little overprotective of my baby...