10,000 miles across the country

In October I packed up my newly earned private pilot’s license, along with my climbing gear, camping gear, and my survival vest and caught a flight East to meet up with the Flying Fish. He was starting the third leg of his cross-country shakedown cruise with 322MX.

322MX on the ground in Indiana

He’d already flown solo from Seattle to Boston via Boulder, Grand Rapids and Niagara Falls on his first leg. The second leg took him down the coast over NYC, the Outer Banks and Myrtle Beach. The third leg would take us both from the Appalachians to Arizona. I met up with him in Kentucky where we spent a weekend climbing in the Red River Gorge before heading west.

Fall colors in Eastern Kentucky

The Red River Gorge is where I'd learned to climb and I'd been wanting to take the Flying Fish there for ages. It's still as gorgeous as ever - the landscape hasn't changed, the rock is still soft and delightfully overhanging. We spent the night at Miguels, the day in the forest and just enough time hanging on the rock to fall in love with the Red all over again...

the kindest rock you'd ever hope to climb

After waiting out a couple of days of weather, we turned west and headed out across the plains. We stopped in Tulsa to visit my ancient and frail grandma (not nearly so frail in mind and spirit as she is in her bones). It was a delight to see her and spend a little time with family in Tulsa. After that we headed south and another stop in East Texas to visit some old friends. From there we took off west across the vast empty scrub of Texas, and kicked up north to drop in on Santa Fe. We were making up time lost to the weather and moved pretty quickly until we got to Arizona, where all of a sudden the landscape started getting really interesting.

the Painted Desert

For the next couple days, we flew over some of the most mind-blowing terrain in the country. Our route took us up and over the Grand Canyon where we flew out over the rim and watched the earth fall away below us.

a confluence of canyons and a fire on the north rim

We flew through giant stacks of red rock to land at Sedona where the airport is perched on a mesa just a hair larger than the airstrip - like landing on an aircraft carrier except thankfully it doesn't move.

if you blow the landing, just keep flying off the end of the runway

We spent the night camped in a cactus forest next to a red-gravel strip surrounded by 30+foot high saguaro.

cactus camp in the back country

We flew over Lake Roosevelt and followed the river as it cascaded through canyons to the flatland and passed over Scottsdale and Tempe before landing at Sky Harbor in Phoenix. My adventure ended there, while the Flying Fish continued on over the course of the next week to southern California and up through San Francisco.

a little bit of sun on the Golden Gate

He kept flying north over the Siskyus and into Oregon, across the Columbia River and arriving finally back in good ol' Puget Sound, home to Seattle.

after 10,000 miles Seattle still looks pretty darn good

A first run of photos can be found at this linky. They're the postcard shots.
The next run of photos will be up sooner or later, and when they are I'll post a link here too.