John & Anne Wiley

2010/07/11

Swept Up

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Has Photos,NxNW Adventure,Random,Tripp — John @ 02:54

We’re getting swept up in the idea of flying another Big Adventure. Now in addition to requesting your ideas of places to see, we welcome any ideas on what to call this one. Big Adventure II is our name so far, but something new would be much more fun. How about “Northwest Passage?”

As you can see, we’re still wanting to cross into Canada from Oshkosh and then go West by Northwest. Now we’re considering a short hop across inhospitable terrain from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan, instead of the long flight to Fairbanks and Anchorage along the highways. Maybe on the next trip, if we do visit AK and get a taste of what flying there is like. By all accounts, AK has a pilot’s frame of mind so we’ll access a large amount of expertise by making a short wilderness crossing.

Our current vision is through Edmonton rather than Calgary, but we wanted to investigate that option too, and there’s a chance we’d go to AK via Edmonton and return via Calgary and South through Glacier Park based on feedback and lots of variables.

By downsizing the AK part and minimizing wilderness, we’ll probably also feel more comfortable to forego carrying a gun. So here’s the current vision, with the highways in blue and our approximate route in shades of green (light green on the homeward leg). Any pilot will know that this will change a lot based on airport and fuel options, and weather. Low/slow pilots like me also tend to make changes based on whimsy (see it, like it, go look, maybe land if there’s a suitable airport), and hunch (this looks like a cool town to explore). Even so, it’s likely that our actual flight path will be considerably shorter than the driving distance given by gMaps.

TripRoute-v3 N by NW

TripRoute-v3 N by NW

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