: Follow the great circle route about 2000 nm from BCB (VA) until you get to the start of the Alaska highway at Dawson
: Creek, BC.

: It was up to me as the most experienced cross-country pilot to plot
: our routes to Alaska. I began by plotting a great circle as above,
: but immediately rejected it. It would have taken us right smack over
: the middle of Lake Superior, far too big a body of water to fly over;
: and then we'd have had a long ride over completely uninteresting (and
: inhospitable) terrain.

: So we went west to Helena or Spokane before heading toward Dawson
: Creek. We had interesting stops at the Amana Villages in Iowa; Wall,
: S.D. (home of the infamous Wall Drug Store); Mt. Rushmore; and Helena,
: a great place to visit.

Well, I wasn't *completely* honest in my description, either. Truth be told,
we only went as far as Milwaukee the first day since I've got family there. I've done
that route many times, and the great circle takes you over Lake Michigan a fair ways.
I generally fly lakeshore by Chicago on that route... probably only about 20 miles out
of the way anyway.

After Milwaukee it was great circle to Dawson Creek. I found it somewhat
aggravating to try to plot the course enough to even find out what charts to buy. One
cannot simply "draw a straight line" on a big chart. I ended up using a "great circle
mapper" online to get some airports and lat/longs to determine which charts to go
with.

Fun trip... thinking about doing it again this upcoming summer with my
brother.

-Cory

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* Cory Papenfuss, Ph.D., PPSEL-IA *
* Electrical Engineering *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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