Part II - Friday, day 8. August 2

Today's goal:  leave Great Falls, Montana and get over the Rocky mountains. Ultmately, we hope to be in Portland tonight, and catch up with our friens - the Vestys and Tor & Liv.  We are a little cautious though, as we need to make sure we don't get into clouds with temperatures below freezing. Worst case, we divert to Boise Idaho.  We will be traveling at 14,000 feet, so we are equipped with oxygen.  

Just before we we ready to go, four F-15s tok off.  They are part of the Montana Air Natonsl Guard.  So cool!  They we're wheels up in less than 5 seconds, and then went vertical to gain altitude.  

Take off with an immediate climb to 13,000 feet.  We are first traveling over the Big Belt range.  Absolutely gorgeous.

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Twenty minutes into the flight we are at 14,000 feet and above the clouds.  Can't see the mountains (boo hoo), but we also don't have to worry about ice - as the temperature up here is 26 degrees F.   (big yahoo).

Well, that was good, but another 20 minutes and we are climbing to 18,000 because the clouds got higher.    Naughty clouds.   But we can see through the clouds from time to time, and it is amazing.  I'm pretty sure we climbed through the Big Belt Range first, and then we will be going over the Bitter Root range once we move into Idaho close to Oregon.  We have a 25 knot headwind, so we are only at approx 100 knots per hour.  

At 2:29 we decided to divert to Boise to refuel and refill the oxygen.  We've been dealing with 30+ knot headwinds, and just using too much fuel to get all the way to Portland without stressing about it.  And this is supposed to be a stress-less trip, so Boise here we come.  That's why we had Boise as a back-up.   And then the clouds parted and I got a great picture of the mountains - as we entered into Idaho.  

Went over Deadwood Reservoir (below)

Landing in Boise was interesting, as it's just over the mountains .  Had to descend quickly from 12,000  ft for our landing - but Rick did a great job.  Best landing of the trip so far - very smooth.

And look - it's the Idaho Air National Guard and more F15s, and even 2 F18s.  

Western Air FBO was very nice.  Melissa took very good care of us.  We stayed right in downtown Boise, and really liked it.  Seemed to be a very vibrant downtown - lots of nice shops and restaurants -- and we didn't see any national chains.

Had dinner at Chandler's steak house.  OMG so very, very good.  Steaks were awesome.  The Halibut was great.  And the Fruit Cobbler with cinnamon ice cream was incredibly scrumptious.   There will definitely have to be some minimal eating days after that cobbler !n   But soooooo worth it.