Hello, Tailwinds...

The last night of the trip wound up being another crummy night's sleep, but whatever...we woke up early, grabbed breakfast at the hotel, and shortly after 7am were on our way back to JVY, thanks again to Kellye. We managed to beat the rush hour traffic over the bridge and through the construction and made good time getting back to the airport.

The weather looked pretty good all the way back to Virginia, though they were calling for a chance of storms west of the mountains in the afternoon. Thanks to the guys at the FBO, we were topped off and on our way before 8am.

Bye, JVY - we'll be back someday! If you're heading to the Louisville area, I definitely recommend using this as your stop.   :)

We had a 30-40kt tailwind for most of the first leg, and were averaging ground speeds around 135kt. Nice! We did fly through a few rain showers a bit past Frankfort, but there wasn't anything too heavy and we didn't need to deviate at all.

This was somewhere in Ohio; I thought it looked cool how the town sat right up against the river.

I don't know where this was, but it looked really cool! When I'm flying, Mark takes most of the pictures; he did a really good job getting some cool shots on this trip.

A little less than two hours later, we reached our fuel stop: Jackson County, WV (I18).

It sits right near the Ohio River; if you fly a long enough downwind, you wind up crossing the state line into Ohio in the pattern!

Final for I18. The airport sits right next to some kind of power plant...nothing like coming in to land right next to a ginormous smokestack.

The only person we saw at the airport was a man on a riding mower. He took a break when we landed and helped us fuel. I did another quick weather check, and we were on our way again less than half an hour after we landed. It was a great quick stop!

We had tailwinds on the next leg, too, though they slowly decreased as we flew east.

When Mark took this, he told me to show him my 135kt ground speed smile. Someday I'll have a faster plane...for now, I'll take it!

We eventually flew over Shenandoah National Park. We hadn't seen any other airplanes along the way, but as soon as we crossed the last set of ridges it started to get busy. We pulled up the CTAF for CJR, listened to several planes try to run each other (and at one point, us) over, then switched over to HWY's CTAF and heard several aircraft in the pattern there, too. Luckily it quieted down as we got closer, and we had no problem getting into the pattern.

Final for 15 at HWY. We made it!

It took a little under 4 hours of flying time to get home, and thanks to the tailwinds we were back on the ground at HWY before noon. We put the plane away, packed up the car, and realized the dogsitters would still be making one more stop at our house.

Why go home, then, when you can sit outside and have a nice lunch in Old Town Warrenton?

We went to Claire's at the Depot for lunch, did some grocery shopping, and eventually made our way home to the dogs (who were pretty excited to see us). Overall, we had a great trip! It took 9.5 hours of flying time, round-trip, I got to land at 5 new airports and visit 2 new states, and we had a really good time exploring some new places (and drinking some new drinks). I definitely want to get back to Kentucky again sometime!

One of the best parts of flying our own plane around: we could bring back as many souvenirs as we wanted! Mmm, delicious souvenirs...