So it has started, day two of my massive river trip. I am looking at the Grand Tetons out my motel window here in Driggs Idaho getting ready for the first day of the Missouri River.

Yesterday I left Santa Rosa California and flew here more or less in a straight line, having seen that country go by before. Today should be more interesting.

Over the next few days I plan to follow the Missouri River to the Mississippi River then head downstream to the Ohio River. I will follow that upstream to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania then go south via the Monongahela, Youghiogheny, and Potomac. My destination will be Fredrick Maryland where my oldest brother will pick me up for a few weeks visit. He and I may make some "local" flights to New York and North Catalina. Then in about three weeks I will head straight home to California.

The first map above shows my intended overnight stops. Each day I will be covering about 750 miles.

I take lots of pictures as I fly and upload them to my personal webpage (see item one below). The pictures are unedited and may or may not be interesting. I clean these up when I get home but while I am flying, what you see is what you get.

For those so inclined, you can follow my progress via any of three different tracking systems.

1. This link takes you to my home-grown tracking web page that I wrote 10 years ago and have not modernized since. The page shows a map with my current or most recent flight. If I am flying, and within Verizon cell coverage, when you press the F5 key (or click refresh) the map will refresh.  If you don’t, it only updates every 5 minutes on its own.  There is a link on the page to a rudimentary slide show so you can view recent pictures. If you scroll down more you will see additional information including the date and time the data is for. The date and time are so you can see if the information is current. Why? Because I might be flying outside the coverage of Verizon’s towers and so the information might be out of date by minutes or hours. Further down the page there is lots of data, including air and ground speed, heading, altitude, height above the ground, fuel remaining, engine RPM, engine temperatures etc. The airplane sends this data every 10 seconds when in Version coverage.
2. This link takes you to my Garmin inReach Satellite tracking web page.  This web page is quite reliable but generally only updates every 10 minutes because the unit I carry in the plane can not be made to update more often than that. So it is reliable but limited.
3. This link takes you to FlightTradar24s web page. The page is not specific to my airplane, unless you enter my N number (N601WF) into the search box in the upper-right hand corner of the map and press enter. If I am flying, and the plane is within FAA ADS-B coverage, my plane will be highlighted with a line showing where I have been, while in coverage.  Often I will be flying at 500 feet above the ground, which is quite low, so the FAA may not pick me up. So while flying and while the FAA can see me, this map will show me when you search for me. By the way, this web page allows you to track airplanes around the world. Most flights are commercial flights so you can track a flight of someone you know who is flying as long as you know the flight information. You can click any airplane to see where it came from and where it is going. Rather astounding amount of info on most the planes in the air at any one time.

Steve

P.S. 09/19/2021: Years later I have cleaned up the picture collection and uploaded them here.