We arrived at the airport fairly early and realized, because of mountain cloud coverage over the Cascade Mountains we would need to file IFR over the mountains. We launched out of Bellingham heading to Twin Falls, ID as our first fuel stop, which would be a little over 3 hours of flying.
We landed in Twin Falls and decided to have lunch before blasting off. In checking the weather en route it appeared that there would be some convective build up along our route. It was forecasted to be scattered but you really never know for sure. We took off, heading for Farmington, NM/ Four Corners as our next fuel stop.
Our route took us right over the the lake, or salt which ever you think it is :>}, and just to the west a little bit from downtown Salt Lake City. The airspace in this area is what is classified as class B, which is the highest level and busiest of airports, like Dallas, and I had planned that we would just skirt on the very west edge of their airspace, assuming they wouldn't mind since we weren't penetrating the busiest area, wrong assumption.
He basically told us "get your butt out of our airspace, but in a more technical terms, such as "avoid entering class B airspace" So we had to just deviate a little bit, but the reason I picked the route I did was, because of some restricted airspace nearby so we had to be diligent not to penetrate that airspace.
It was beginning to get a little bumpy at this point and I was seeing weather on my screens ahead, most of which was wide spread. We were also getting a lot of up and down drafts. In other words we were starting to get into the convective build up area, like the forcaster had thought we would.
Just after Salt Lake heading into Four Corners we were finding it necessary to deviate to avoid build ups with some heavy rain. Just outside of Farmington as we were trying to get into land, we had to deviate around a pretty good build up and when we finally got into Farmington ready to land they were calling the winds at 26kts gusting to 38kts. The airport in Farmington sits up on a mesa and it's very deceptive on landing. The depth perception was more difficult because of the big drop off around the airfield. We had to really pay attention to our altitude indication.
As we turned base to final the wind had really whipped up our ground speed so the combinations of things made for an interesting landing. But we both made it down ok so that's always good :>}
After experiencing how strong the winds were and how late it had gotten, also partly due to a time change, we decided to bag it and make the final leg in the morning. I think the fuel price in Farmington was $6.80 per gallon. Man that hits the old credit card hard.
We headed out to a hotel with a courtesy car and called it a day.
Wayne
Ron & Barb
David & me
Can you see the cowboys and indians down there :>}
Farmington, NM Four Corners
Hum interesting to say the least!
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