Home, Sweet Home

Sunday morning it was time to start heading home "for real" -- meaning no more looking for places to go. The weather for the trip home was absolutely beautiful, with clear skies over the entire Western US. The tailwinds that helped us on the way to South Lake Tahoe died down completely, so there was no headwind to contend with at altitude. We also confirmed that we missed Colorado by one day: had the good weather come in the day before, we would have been in Aspen on Sunday instead of Salt Lake. Oh well, next time. When travelling in a small airplane that is not approved for icing conditions, you have to be flexible in where you go and what time you get there.

For the flight home, we planned two legs: Salt Lake City to Boise and Boise to Paine. The takeoff and departure from Salt Lake City, a Class B airport, was quite uneventful. We got our IFR clearance and release to Boise much quicker than at North Las Vegas -- perhaps that's because the Vegas airspace is rather busy with folks arriving to gamble (it is, after all, Lost Wages, Nevada!) Enroute visibility was excellent with no haze whatsoever: even though we were quite a bit south of Hailey, Idaho, we spotted without difficulty the valley in which Sun Valley airport is located. And, from 12,000 feet, we saw the Boise airport from over 40 miles away. To lessen the time we put on the aircraft, we took a straight-in visual for runway 28L, even though the winds were favoring runway 10. I'm not saying I recommend landings with a tailwind -- but, if the winds are light and within airplane limitations (they were), and if the runway is sufficiently long (it was), and if you're up to the challenge, then it's certainly an option.

Our stopover at Boise was at the Turbo Air FBO. It's a first-rate facility, with excellent service, and they happily loaned us their crew car to grab lunch in town. Speaking of food in Boise: I highly recommend Buster's Bar and Grill: from the I-84 freeway, take the Broadway exit, and head north a couple of miles. Buster's will be on the east side of Broadway. Excellent food and atmosphere, and reasonable prices, too! For all you football fans, they've got several big screen TV's showing live games.

The flight back to Paine Field was direct VFR at 8,500 feet, with some dodging of restricted areas near Yakima. Not much to report there; we've done that route a number of times.

And so the "big trip" was complete. We logged 17.5 hours on the airplane, visited 6 airports, and talked to 5 air route traffic control centers (Seattle, Oakland, LA, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake). Tons of fun on every leg. Here are some cool links that illustrate where we've been:

• A video that Milen made of me approaching into Medford, OR.
• Another video (also by Milen) of me landing in Sedona, AZ. Sorry for the shaking on the two videos -- it was taken with my digital camera with no advanced "shake reduction" capability...
• Pictures from the trip.
• Tracks from FlightAware: PAE-MFR, MFR-TVL, VGT-SEZ, SEZ-SLC, and SLC-BOI. The flight from Tahoe to Vegas did not get recorded for some reason, and Boise to Paine was VFR. (You may have to be a FlightAware registered user to access these links.)

P.S. Overall, I lost $100 in Nevada... I was hoping to win some money to recoup the cost of the trip, but it wasn't so (this time). :-(