A Journal, with Pictures

June 27, 28 and 29

Bill McN­abb, a pilot friend of mine, and I have been plan­ning a fly­ing trip across the Unit­ed States. We would then go up the west coast of Alas­ka, vis­it Ketchikan, Seward and Denali, then through the Yukon Ter­ri­to­ry, across British Colum­bia, then back from Mon­tana to Day­ton, Ohio our start­ing point.

On our day of depar­ture a huge ugly storm sys­tem across the upper Mid­west caused us to re-plan our first day and fly south to Chanute, Kansas to refu­el. We then flew to our ini­tial des­ti­na­tion Laramie, Wyoming. We skirt the storm the whole way and buck head­winds and arrive in Laramie after a long day. We over night and leave the next morn­ing first stop Boise, Ida­ho. We get a great view of the con­ti­nen­tal divide with the Tetons in the distance.

It’s very hot in Boise, Ida­ho and after refu­el­ing and lunch we are off to Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton. We encounter clouds and tur­bu­lence as we fly over the Cas­cade range, but make a visu­al approach into our des­ti­na­tion for the day.

Our plan is to fly to Ketchikan, Alas­ka tomor­row, but moth­er nature has oth­er ideas. When we get up, low icing lev­els over our route cause us to start look­ing at an alter­na­tive plan. After giv­ing up on plan“A”, we start plan­ning anoth­er route up the east side of the Alas­ka Range. We lose a day, but we think we can rejoin our orig­i­nal itin­er­ary in Alas­ka. We go to bed think­ing that we will skip Ketchikan and go to White­horse in the Yukon tomor­row, then on to Anchor­age the next day.