Regardless of the time, it is still before dawn, and I decide to file an IFR flight plan to Ketchikan, about halfway to Hillsboro, so that I can get right in and not worry about the weather. It feels weird having ATC vector me around, and dangerous when they almost send me into the side of a mountain not long after takeoff. Luckily, I was able to climb quickly to avoid ending our journey early.

You know it's going to be a bad day when the crosswind forces you to fly directly into a rising sun. For about an hour, we could barely see anything. Finally, we were vectored down below the clouds and to the east a little, to land at Ketchikan.

We got down below the clouds, and quickly wihed we were back up above staring into the sun. There was a lot of wind, rain and generally yucky weather.

We landed a little hard, but didn't hurt anything, and went right to refueling. 20 minutes later, we were back on our way south.

Instead of flying directly to Hillsboro, I want to do a flyover of Vancouver, and another of Seattle, along the way. We have to stay at 10,000 while north of Vancouver to avoid flying into more mountains.

The weather clears as we head south, with most of the clouds disappearing behind us, and only a haze left in front of us. We are going to drop down to 3,500 feet to fly over the city of Vancouver, one of the more beautiful cities in the world.

We fly just over the north end of the city before turning south towards Seattle. There are some good shots below.

We went back over the clouds for the trip to Seattle, and dropped back down to 2,000 feet to get pictures. It was raining in Seattle (there's a shock), so visibility was limited. However, we did get several good shots of the city.

After Seattle, we headed south for Hillsboro, just west of Portland. It should take about 45 minutes to get there from Seattle, putting us on the ground at about 2:30 PST, just in time for lunch.

After lunch, it's a day/night flight down to Las Vegas, to see the fireworks.

We get back in the plane at 4:30 local time, just a little before sunset. I decide to fly to the east a bit to get some pictures of downtown Portland before following the Willamette River south to Eugene, and then turning southeast towards Las Vegas.

The flight to Vegas is uneventful. I decide to do a quick flyby of the strip before landing at North Vegas.

It's to early for fireworks yet, so we are going to go grab some dinner before they start.

LEG	Start	Start Time	Land	Land Time	Distance	Trip Time	Fuel Used
1	PAMR Anchorage, Alaska	13:30 GMT 11/22/01	PAKT Ketchikan, Alaska	18:09 GMT 11/22/01	667 NM	4 hr 39 min	214 gal
2	PAKT Ketchikan, Alaska	18:30 GMT 11/22/01	KHIO Hillsboro, Oregon	22:37 GMT 11/22/01	676 NM	4 hr 7 min	238 gal
3	KHIO Hillsboro, Oregon	00:30 GMT 11/23/01	KVGT Las Vegas, Nevada	04:06 GMT 11/23/01	660 NM	3 hr 36 min	216 gal
Day Total					2003 NM	12 hr 22 min	668 gal
Trip Total					26,082 NM	169 hr 03 min	8956 gal

Pictures

Another sunrise over Alaska	Approaching Ketchikan
Approaching Ketchikan	Over British Columbia
Over British Columbia	Vancouver in the distance
Over Vancouver	Over Vancouver
Seattle in the distance	Over Seattle
Over Seattle	Over Seattle
Over Seattle	The Cascades between Seattle and Portland
Flying over a nuclear plant	Downtown Portland
Downtown Portland	Downtown Portland
Las Vegas	Las Vegas
Las Vegas	Las Vegas

Where we've been so far

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