50 @ 50 status update

Yup, two posts in one day from me.  We got home Monday from a 10 day, 3400+ mile road trip.  We went up to Grand Forks, ND to see Matt, then to Medora, ND for the musical, then to Miles City, MT where I checked off state #48, then to Sturgis, SD to check out a cemetery where some of Sherry's relatives are buried (I have geo-tagged photos of the tombstones that she'll probably put up on ancestry.com soon), then to Rapid City, SD, then Mt. Rushmore, then over to Sioux Falls to pick up my mother, back to Mitchell for a family reunion, then down across Iowa to the Amana Colony, to Galesburg, IL and on home.  It was a lot of driving, but we had a good time and it was great to spend time with Matt and my aunts, uncles, and cousins.  As a result, I have now been in all of the contiguous 48 states.  The only remaining ones to accomplish 50@50 are, of course, Alaska and Hawaii.

Flight Log 2010-09-10

A beautiful day to go flying.  Temp: 19°C, winds variable @ 03, altimeter 30.07, clear.  It was a bit windy at altitude, but still a great day.  The purpose of today's flight was to get some instrument practice with the autopilot.  I've used the autopilot en route before, but I've never actually flown a complete approach with it, I always hand flew from the FAF.  Today, I finally flew a coupled ILS (though there was a button pushing problem with me on the first one, so only the second ILS was actually coupled).  2 x ILS22 @ KZZV followed by the GPS27 @ KVTA (circle to land on 9).  A very productive 1.6 hours.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the tracker started (and up on the glare shield) so I don't have the track on Google Earth which I hope to start doing on future flights.  I still need to work on my checklist discipline a bit.  Ah, well, a great day flying.