Headed West

Linda and I are spending the first night of our trip in Joplin Missouri, which is almost exactly half way to Lake Havasu. We got here after about 8 hours flying, with fuel stops in Ohio University and Mount Vernon Illinois. We have had gorgeous blue skies the entire way as we crossed the great plains of the mid West! Nonetheless we filed IFR the whole way so were talking to air traffic control the whole trip. As usual, we have met some lovely helpful people along the way including the guys at Mount Vernon who had lots of advice and help to give when we once again had trouble hot starting.... Kent, I'm putting a new set of magnetos on my Christmas list! We just finished cleaning the squashed bugs off the plane and are hot, grimy and thirsty, so once we check into our hotel we'll be having dinner with Linda's friends Jim and Michelle Heaney. Joplin is where they had a terrible tornado last year that hit the high school, so there's a lot of new building going on here. Our hotel shuttle driver took us past the area that the tornado passed through, and it's amazing the how wide it is, and how much debris and evidence of the destruction is still visible especially on the site where the high school used to be. Very sad. Tomorrow will be the mountainous half of the trip. Instead of scooting along the plains at 4000 feet like we did today, we'll be flying in the brown part of the map, up as high as 12000 feet as we cross the mountains. We'll try to get out early before it gets really hot. Since we're going West we're picking up daylight hours as we cross time zones, so that gives us a little more time. We're looking forward to reuniting with our friends in Arizona - Barbara and Ethel who left on Tuesday got there today, and Mary and Elaine who left Wednesday are in New Mexico.

We followed the Ohio river west for quite a while.

 

We ate lunch at a nice little restaurant at the Mount Vernon airport.

Crossing the mighty Mississippi river (almost as mighty as the Susquehanna)

Crop fires in Missouri

This is where Joplin High School used to stand. A year ago it was destroyed by a terrible tornado. You can see the name on the sign has been changed from Joplin High School to Hope High School. Even a year later it was emotional to drive by the rubble and see the devastation.

For those of you who don't know, Joplin is the home of Michele and Jim Heaney. They met us at the hotel and took us to dinner at Cheddar's, a local restaurant. It was an excellent meal and the company was even better. Thanks for a great dinner and for your great hospitality!