Donna and I's

2nd Cross Country

March 13th 2004

Guess what, No pics again,

We're going have to get a new camera girl because the one we have now just isn't doing her job lol.

This time was even more of a challenge than the first cross country run.  This weekend the mission was to visit a horse farm some friends of ours keep their horses at.   All we had to go on is some directions they gave us that they were about 2 miles south of a small town called New Market, Tennessee.  Prior to going we checked out a mapping program we have and took the Latitude and Longitude from it.  We dialed that information into the Garmin GPS unit we have and if we had followed the path it gave us it would have put us about 30 miles northwest of our destination so we winged it and did it the old fashioned way.  We ended up going right to the place using the chart.  We located the town and the only road running a south from it.  Next we approximated what we thought was a few miles below it and began looking for a red barn with a silo with a circus painted top with a white horse trailer sitting next to it.  To the north of it there was supposed to be a white barn with a green roof.   Did you know that at 2000 feet AGL looking down at BFE Tennessee there are probably 1000 barns below you at any given time lol.  You may not believe it but we flew right to and over the top of the place picking it out without any trouble at all.  Everything that was supposed to be there was just as they had described it, except them lol.  We had called prior to lifting off to be sure that they we're going to be there but saw no vehicles at the place whatsoever much less the ones we are familiar with that they drive.  We were kinda afraid to sit the ship down and wait for them not seeing anyone there (just in case it wasn't the right place and some farmer might come out with a shot gun lol) so after lapping the place about 5 times we decided to head to the Morristown airport (MOR) once again and give our friends another call and see what happened to them.  We flew the extra unplanned 10 miles to the airport and landed.

It turned out our friends had gotten side tracked and were due to be back there in about 30 minutes.   We had about 25 minutes to burn so we went into flight school and chatted with the nice folks there we had met a couple weeks prior on our first cross country trip here.  After a couple of smokes and some chatting we headed back to the farm and this time they were there, thank God lol.  We made a lap around the place and landed in a 12 acre pasture that we had to share with some cows who were at the other end. Fortunately between us and them there was an electric fence.  Landing in this pasture turned out to be a bit of a challenge because there wasn't a near level spot to be found anyplace on the entire 12 rolling acres.  I attempted to sit the ship down twice in an effort to locate an acceptable landing spot.   The first spot didn't feel too good so I picked the ship back up and tried another and another until I found an acceptable one.   We sat and waited for the engine to normalize a minute or two before shutting her down and bailed out heading toward the barn to have our first remote area visit with our friends.   We didn't get halfway across the field when our daughter called and told us that she was leaving work and wanted to take her first flight with me.  Donna told her to wait on us back at the airpark so it turned out we only got to visit for about 20 minutes before we had to head back. This wasn't part of the days plan but hey, it was her first ride with her father so it took top priority as far as we are concerned lol.   We lifted off and pointed the ship towards home base and 20 some minutes later we were back on the ground at the airpark greeting our daughter with about 3.5 gallons of fuel reserve, that's about as close as well ever get to empty again lol.

Thank God were only burning 6 GPH at the moment or we would have surely had to sit down some place for fuel.