We got outta San Manuel, about 10 on saturday morning - after having breakie at the field- bestest way to cook an omlete i've ever seen!! twas about a 2 hr flight down to Las Cruces interntional airport - calling it international is a little polite given it has no scheduled flights to anywhere. The flight was quite nice because we were playing with the clouds most of the way. Marc was either swinging around them or dropping below em and we then spent a while flying above a big blanket of fluffy white cloud which was only at about 500 ft above the ground. Stopped for lunch in Las Cruces and were hoping on to Amarillo before sun down, but Mike Charlie took a slight Hissy fit, and wasnt too keen to start, only slightly completely down to me offering too much fuel to start on - all we could do was let her sit and get over it.

The delay left us short of time to get to Amarillo, and so we stopped in Roswell instead. The airport has a proper bone yard with a ton of old UPS jumbos, and various American airlines and Air Canada jets all in various states - Once again we tried to get a look around - but it sounds like that isnt allowed anywhere......doh... The closest thing we saw to aliens were the street lights which have all been painted to look like aliens heads - way to cash in on the tourists.

Next morning i took us off towards Amarillo for a 10min pit stop to say we'd been there - and then on to Oklahoma. There was no great sign in Amarillo for a piture to show we knew the way, but we got badge to prove we got there. On to Oklahoma and we picked up a sweet tailwind - so while reading an indicated speed of about 110 - we were actually traveling across the ground at about 140 kts - temptation was too much and I decided to....ehrm.... play- power on nose down we were easilly passing 150 kts, a slight dive and we were passing 160kts - mu haha... This was only made better by the fact that we've figured out we can listen to marcs ipod over the headsets while flying. Its very cool to listen to guns n roses while flying along in the sunshine at 7500 ft....

Finished playing and we saw some low clouds on the horizon - to get into oklahoma we'd have to get in beneath them. Dropping down and beneath them - we lost our tailwind and started getting beaten around by turbulence - but the 20odd miles into oklahoma passed quick enough and we landed and then taxi-ed the other 2miles down the runway to the FBO - Not the most friendly we've ever met - but they filled the plane and we checked the weather before getting back on the way again.

We were hoping the cloud would only extend another 20 miles the far side of oklahoma - but no such luck. We had hoped to reach Memphis but again sunset would beat us there and so had decided little rock was a better choice. but after an hour of straining against low cloud and poor viz we decided to stop in Fort Smith, which is where we are now.

Problem is the weather man is predicting ICE STORMs and if theres one thing our little planes dont like its ice, so we reckon we're stuck here till 2moro or even wednesday when it passes by. Then its a 2 day trip back to Lantana. Tho we may well be stopping at orlando to drop or collect a person - will have to see how it all works out......

Pics San Manuel to Roswell



Pics to Fort Smith