Alaska Trip June 21st

Fueling up in Ft. Morgan, CO
Well we're on our way, Ron & Barbara Grover in their RV10 and David Foster and myself in my RV10. David is a friend of mine from our airport. We departed our home airport, 16X, this morning at 6:30AM trying to make sure we could reach our destination before any weather would have a chance to build up from the heat of the day. We actually ended up having great weather all the way to our destination of Billings.

Our first stop was in Ft. Morgan, CO, which is just to the north east of Denver, for fuel and a welcome relief pit stop. Our flight time from Justin, TX to Ft. Morgan was about 4 hours. We took a nice break, filling up the tanks at $4.50 per gallon, which wasn't to bad compared to what we seen coming up on our journey, and having a snack. I think in Olympia the price of 100ll is going to be $5.75.

In getting ready to leave Ft. Morgan we quickly remembered we were at a higher altitude, 4700', the engine didn't want to run very smothly without first leaning the engine a bunch. Also we're loaded fairly heavy for our long trip so between that and the higher altitude, the plane had to grunt a little getting off the ground. I'm use to it jumping up off the runway but the altitude really makes a difference.

We left Ft. Morgan heading to Billings. MT, about a 3 hour flight. In route we saw some great senery. We flew parallel with the Big Horn Mountain Range, which is covered with snow and it was a very impressive site. We arrived in Billings around 1:30 mountain time and got the plane set up for overnight and headed to our hotel, the Boot Hill Inn. I got worried when they said they're taking us to Boot Hill :>}

We had a good evening meal at Applebee's. We plan on trying to leave for the airport tomorrow morning by about 7:00AM and hopefully be in the air by 8:00AM. Our destination will be Olympia, WA. We will have about 4 hours of flying in route, with one pit stop on the way, putting us into Olympia hopefully shortly after lunch.

Well I've got to get buttoned down on this post and get ready for tomorrow.

More to come. Below ar a couple of photos we took of each other on the way.


Ron & Barb enroute to Billings


Up close and personal.



Dave & I in my plane flying along the beginning
of a mountain range.




Ron pulling up the rear guard :>}