Alaska 2017 Summary

Those who followed our inReach tracking devices know our route and can still review it here. (Just ignore the few flights or treks since then.) But there is much more to our trip than our track and  the places we visited. It seems that to finish this blog about our trip there needs to be a summary of sorts. In contemplating a summary I don't think I can do much better than the one I wrote the week we arrived home. So I'll borrow heavily from that.

Aside from a few ball caps and t-shirts, we all brought back thousands of internal images and memories of what we saw and experienced. In collecting my thoughts and meditating on them a bit, it occurred to me that we flew the same number of miles as if we'd flown to Frankfurt Germany, then flew back to Boston MA! :) I knew it was far, but that puts a different perspective on the magnitude of the journey we dreamed of and completed August 14th, 2017.

As I sorted through the many photo and video images I collected during the journey I continued to blog the experience with some reflections and links to the best images for my pilot friends and any of you who expressed interest. :)

One summary of our epic journey might read like this. Our inReach tracking device sent it's first position from the ramp in front of our hangars in Fort Smith (35.33N 94.36W) July 23rd at 6:05 A.M.. The last position was sent from the same location upon our arrival August 14th at 4:41 P.M..

So our journey encompassed 23 days, 22 nights, 8205 miles, 83 hours in the air, and 646 gallons of fuel for each of our two aircraft and crews. That's one summary. :)

Another summary might go like this:

     Great Weather
          Great Fellowship
               Great Flying
                    Great Adventure
                         Great New Friends
                              A spiritual experience, really, on many levels...
                                   Great Worship
                                        Great Peace

All this seems to cry out for a response...? But the only appropriate response seems to be...
     Deep inner gratitude and silence...

...Worship and Thanksgiving to Him Who made all we've seen and extended the invitation to us to come experience it. :):):):)






   “He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He walks upon the wings of the wind;” (Psalm 104:3)


   “He who made the Pleiades and Orion And changes deep darkness into morning, Who also darkens day into night, Who calls for the waters of the sea And pours them out on the surface of the earth, The Lord is His name.” (Amos 5:8)