Inspired by my successful southern-route cross-country in March (viewtopic.php?t=8898) and mhoran's northern-route cross-country trip (viewtopic.php?t=8998), I decided to take off again in the hopes of reaching Seattle and the San Juans. I had just successfully packed my daughter off to college and so had the flexibility to take a bunch of time.
First day was a late start Saturday afternoon and a quick hop, KAQW North Adams to KROC Rochester. The fun there was getting out - a thunderstorm was approaching fast from the northwest, so I cut short the inevitable conversations at my home field with pilots out on a weekend and skirted the storms to the south. 15 minutes later, heavy rain was hitting the airport and I would've ended up pushing to the next day. As is, it was just a routine VFR flight of skirting a few buildups and figuring out logistics on the ground. AvFlight turned out to be a reasonable and cheaper alternative to Signature.
Day 2, I was Mackinac Island-bound. Did the Canada overflight KROC Rochester to KIKW Midland/Jack Barstow for a fuel stop. Filed IFR as I prefer to have guaranteed communication over Canada. In planning the flight, I wrestled with how much tolerance I would have for cutting the corner on Lake Huron - ended up settling on a roughly 20-mile overflight on the Tango airway and asked for a brief climb to keep within gliding distance despite the stiffer headwinds at altitude.
From there it was a short hour-long trip to KMCD Mackinac Island. It was perfect weather and so I was able to tour the surrounding islands and do a full lap around Mackinac before landing to the east. The airport is in the middle of the island - no motor vehicles are allowed, everything is horse-and-buggy and bicycle. I have a folding bike that came in especially handy there. The fudge was to die for!
Day 3 was a sunrise start from Mackinac County to KFAR Fargo, with a fuel stop in KXVG Longville. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes for a reason, and this was serious lake country - even though some of them were tiny-ish ponds. I had originally considered stopping in Duluth, but I decided being in the middle of nowhere might be more fun for the lunchtime stop. Talked with some folks who alternate between floats and skis with their Cubs, and it was a lovely little community airport similar to dozens of others I've stopped at in my travels. By early afternoon, the thermals had picked up a bit, but it was a short flight to Fargo so I put up with it.
Had some work early Day 4 and so got a late-morning start out of Fargo. The smoke from Canadian fires really had visibility down to poor levels. I could barely see across the airport as the hotel shuttle drove me to the airport. I quickly filed IFR just so I wouldn't have to worry about whether visibility was more or less than 3 miles, picking KMLS Miles City as the intermediate destination with the intent of stretching to KBIL Billings later in the afternoon.
The first couple hours of the flight was tough. It turns out that 4 mile visibility with a lack of a clear horizon is even more disorienting to me than flying through a broken cloud layer. (And again, a quick reminder: I don't have an autopilot, so it's all on me to stay straight and level.) Fortunately, landing traffic had given a PIREP that the top of the smoke layer was around 6,500, so I quickly asked for 8,000 instead of the 6,000 I had filed. As the flight went on, though, visibility worsened and the smoke layer rose. I did something I'd never done before, asking for a block altitude 8,000 to 10,000. That let me poke higher at will as I tried to find tops, but by then it was just bad everywhere and so I went lower where I had at least a bit more ground contact.
Salt Lake Center wanted me to descend 100 miles out and I didn't particularly want to deal with the surface turbulence for that long, so I cancelled IFR after the worst of the smoke and landed at Miles City without incident. It's a fun little airport - I ended up talking for a long while to the 20-year-old line guy who was otherwise bored out of his mind waiting for folks on a hot low-traffic day. I took the crew car and got lunch and goofed around waiting for the heat to die down. In the end, it was still 35 C/95 F when I took off around 6:15 pm. It's a long runway, I watched a couple planes take off before me, and the DA40 is light when it's just me, so density altitude didn't cause big problems.
KMLS to KBIL was just an hour, and despite some visibility constraints was solid VFR. I lived in Billings for five years so am quite familiar with the area, but one nice surprise was that Edwards Jet Center was able to get me hotel discounts that were fully 50% below what my apps were offering. That experience reminded me that sometimes good FBOs can add some value above and beyond direct costs that can justify higher fees, although to its credit, Edwards ended up not charging me any overnight fees and the avgas price was quite reasonable.
The unexpectedly cheap hotel in the end prompted me to stay there an extra couple days, both to get some work done and to wait for some weather over the mountains to pass. Highlights included losing $20 at the famous Crystal Lounge poker room where Annie Duke used to play, and a nice long bike ride along the rimrocks overlooking the Yellowstone Valley.
Up next: crossing the mountains!
