Today we flew from Bend, Oregon to Rock Springs, Wyoming (730 miles) on a very HOT day.  I burned through a total of 51.3 gallons of fuel.  The trip was an eye opener for me.  I truly realized how different General Aviation is from commercial aviation.  Commercial aviation is very structured and scheduled – for good reason! But General Aviation can be very fluid and you can change your mind about where you want to go without having to tell anyone.  If a General Aviation pilot wants to go somewhere, they just go.  Of course we look at weather, other conditions and use good judgement.  But we aren’t bound to a fixed schedule or flight path – especially when we are flying VFR or by “Visual Flight Rules”. For example, during the first section of the flight, I decided I wanted to get a photo of the Lake Owyhee but in order for me to do that, I had to fly in an way other than just “straight and level”, with some banking and so forth.  You just aren’t able to easily to do that kind of thing outside of flying VFR.  We also had to avoid some storm cells as we passed through Idaho and Wyoming.  And we were able to make last minute decisions to go here or there to avoid those cells by examining their paths and looking at how we could avoid them.  Lastly, to me, General Aviation represents freedom.  We flew all the way to Wyoming and no one had to know about it.  I mean, no one was giving us permission or controlling our movements.  But trust me… people know about this flight, because I wanted to tell my family and friends.  But I didn’t have to ask permission or get any kind of “clearance” – very much a feeling of freedom.

I also really enjoyed the landscapes of Wyoming from the sky.  I took photos and hope you see what I mean.  I’m sharing some of my favorite images from the flights today.  Notice in the image named Flight Segment 2, this is what we had to do to avoid some storm cells.