Memorial day trip to Durango

The weather was good Saturday morning, so we headed off in the Piper...

Durango was in the plan so we stopped in for a quick break, and decided to push on to the Grand Canyon.

 First we approached Lake Meade, note the water level is pretty low. 

 A quick touch and go in Page AZ, we headed around past the Glenn Canyon Dam.  This is a very impressive airport to land at.  If you are approaching from the north, you fly across lake Meade, then a road, then touch down on the runway...

 The northern section of the grand canyon...  As we got closer we tested the cloud layer above and the clouds were at 10,000'.  The VFR route over the corridors in the canyon is at 10,500' planned altitude.  We weren't able to fly over the canyon anywhere.

 Noting a storm over the grand canyon airport, a fly over was in the plan, we decided to head back.  As we were heading back we raced another building storm back to town.  We were able to beat this one and stay dry.  Only some light turbulence on the way back to Durango.

 Thanks Mom and Dad for having us over, and the great meal.  Salmon and Chicken.  Tony and Karen dropped in for a visit after the Iron Horse.  (that's a whole different story.)  In the morning we were heading over to Pagosa, we waited for the weather to clear some, and did some skud running. 

We were headed down a valley and I decided to GPS in our destination and determined we should head left.  Off the nose was Lake Navajo, and a few minutes up the valley we came across Chimney Rock.
About this time I was checking on the field information for the destination and noted we were below field elevation.  I started climbing and pulled up into Pagosa.

Janet, Landen and Kalena were down visiting Bev and Ed.  Thanks for hosting us for a second night on the road!  We had several great walks with Janet 'n fam.  The weather was still a little marginal for mountain flying.

Monday we hopped in the plane at 10 am off the ground about 10 after.  The winds on Wolf Creek pass varied over the morning hours prior to our departure anywhere from 10kts to 17kts gusting up to 27.   So we headed down over Cumbres pass, and home.  Back in good time, we were talking to the Tower at noon.

We decided to skip skiing this afternoon so we could ride bikes out to lunch, clean the gutters and get ready for the work week.  We both had a great time out!