Thursday June 19

We were nervous. We knew we had to cross the Rockies into Bozeman, so we started early and were off the ground by 8:05 AM. We had our course down pat. As navigator, I checked and rechecked the maps, the gps settings at least three times. Mary asked, "are you ready?" "yes" I said and we rolled down the runway and lifted into the big sky of Montana. My plan was to go direct with the GPS's guidance and follow the terrain to a couple of airports along the Yellowstone River. Twice the GPS gave a message, "unit will shut down in 30 seconds" on the screen. My heart added an extra beat each time I saw it. But we got that resolved and kept the unit going. Our last leg would be strictly pilotage, following the highway. Direct would take us over a 10000' mountain which we wanted to avoid.

We contacted the controller for traffic advisories before we passed over Billings. He mentioned we were at the wrong altitude for our direction of flight. We told him we knew that but that is just a suggestion, and there were clouds ahead of and slightly above us and we wanted to stay at 7500 feet to stay under them.
As we got closer to the clouds we realized they were actually the snow covered mountain peaks all around us. Some over 11000 feet. The ride was smooth as we followed our planned course. We kept looking at the mounatins, and each other. We flew just right of Bozeman Pass into the Gallatin Valley. A beautiful sight. The Pass is about 20 miles from the airport and in the clear mountain air the valley was a wonderous sight. We are so exhilarated by the whole trip, but especially this last flight (2.5 hours) to Bozeman.

Our journey to the race start has ended. Now we move to the mundane details of the race over the weekend, inspections, registrations, briefings, etc. On Tuesday the race begins and we reverse the course and fly as fast as we can!