The Course of Course

Once the decision to go west was made, the question became exactly which way and when? First came the when. I picked the June date for a bunch of reasons. I am hoping that we will be flying after the spring thunderstorm season and before the heat of summer. This should make the flight smoother and get the most out of 374's ability. The chosen week in June is just before the official start of summer giving us nice long days for flying. Early June should also be before the big vacation rush making accommodations a little easier to secure. And this should all happen before the busy season at work gets rolling along. Taking the northern route across the country was an easy decision- its pretty much a straight shot west. I have a brother-in-law living in Ione, Washington whom I have never visited and with Ione having an airport and my brother-in-law owning a bar there I had my destination. The big considerations in planning the exact route for this flight were how far can we safely fly between fuel stops and bathroom breaks, how high can we fly, what do we want to see, where will we spend the night, pilot fatigue and what's out there to bump into? I talked to some mountain flying experts and some fellow pilots who live in the western states and they all agreed that when flying the northern route west I would do best in my plane to cross the Rockies at Missoula, Montana(KMSO) and to follow the road. I like to use the flight planning on the AOPA website- I find it easy to use and easy to edit. I like to fly from airport to airport on a long cross country flight, it increases the options and that can't be bad. It also makes for an easy double check of my navigation, gives me something to look forward to, and it never hurts to practice spotting airports. I knew that I wanted an early morning launch from KMSO to get over the Rockies, so that became the end-of-day 2 destination. I also knew that I didn't want to plan more than 8 hours a day in the air. I also wanted to fly over the lowest possible terrain for as long as possible. And as long as I was headed that way anyway, I thought it would be absolutely stunning to fly over Mount Rushmore. Talk about your photo opportunity.