We made Indiana!

In the terrific book, Flight of Passage, Rinker Buck describes how he and his brother, Kern, flew a Piper Cub from NJ to California when they were only 15 and 17 years old. It was an amazing flight and the book is a great read. In it, they describe calling home after the first loooonnnng day and telling their parents "We made Indiana!"

Well, it took me two days to make Indiana but I made it today. I had hoped to reach Joliet, IL, to pick up another pilot and then head south. The weather at Joliet made that clearly impossible, so I decided to go as far as I could.

I departed Findlay, OH, in the morning and headed to Kendallville, IN, just an hour away but halfway to Valparaiso, IN, where I hoped to end up for the night. I was hoping that I'd find someone in Kendallville who was knowledgeable about Indiana weather and airports who could advise me on my course of action. I was very lucky: after landing, I went into the FBO and met John Earlywine, a flight instructor and a gentleman. We checked the weather radar and he gave me his thoughts on what we were looking at. Then we went over my sectional (a chart used by pilots) as he pointed out a whole series of "good airports" between Kendallville and Valparaiso. With that in hand, I knew that if I ran into bad weather I could turn back before I got caught in it and would have good options for landing no matter how far I'd gotten.

I watched the weather carefully as I progressed toward Valparaiso. There was bad weather all around but it stayed in the clear. I was able to land before the first raindrops began to hit the 70L's windshield.

The FBO put 70L in a hangar for the night and lent me a "crew car", free of charge. You meet a lot of nice people when you travel by small plane. :-) Marriott had a hotel one mile from the airport, so I was all set for the night. Hopefully, I'll be able to fly the last hour to Joliet tomorrow morning and then turn south to Missouri.