2013 Cross-Country Trip Day 13: Santa Fe to Heber City

We didn’t make it to the four corners area the night before, so we decided to depart Santa Fe, fly over four corners, then make our fuel stop in Moab (Canyonlands Airport).  From there it’d be  a short flight to Heber City, the closest airport to Park City.

We departed under mostly clear, though a little smoky, skies.  The scenery started getting more and more interesting as our flight progressed.  I was concerned about suitable emergency landing areas, but was pleasantly surprised that even away from main roads, there were tons of straight dirt roads.

We got to the four corners monument (which isn’t on the whole latitude/longitude lines as I’d expected).  There’s really not much to it.  Kelly and I were glad we didn’t drive the one hour each way to see it from the ground.

From here, the scenery got even better.  The pictures really don’t do it justice–you need to be there to fully appreciate it.

Canyonlands Airport in Moab was fairly busy.  We landed and no one bothered to tell us where to park.  Also, self-service fuel was inop, but fortunately we didn’t need any.  Terminal was nice, though, so we took a break.

Departing again, it was bumpy again, but we felt fine.  The rest of the flight involved flying through the mountains south of Salt Lake, then upon reaching Provo, turn right to head northeast through a mountain pass to Heber City.  This part of the flight was also beautiful and much different than the canyons.

The approach and landing in Heber City was amazing.  On the ground, we ran into fellow RV-10 builder and pilot Sean Strasburg, who offered to help with a fuel smell issue we were experiencing (our fuel flow sender is leaking again–more on that in a later post).  With the airplane tied down, we grabbed our rental car (which was driven to our airplane for us) and headed into town.

Next: Day 15: Heber City to Seattle

Previous: Day 12: Austin to Santa Fe