An around-the-country flight had been percolating in Jared's mind for several years, particularly since acquiring a Mooney MSE. The Mooney made for a nice traveling machine and Jared was itching to wring it out on an extended adventure. And, Jared had recently read a book by Stephen Coonts, The Cannibal Queen, which relates Coonts' own around-the-country journey in his Stearman biplane. Reading this book just fueled the fire even more. Jared roped Bill, a professional colleague, into the adventure. Having worked together and flown together on a few of occasions, we both knew the other to be a capable and meticulous pilot. So we set to work on the plan.

    Alaska was quite a distance, yet possible with stops in Canada, but Hawaii was simply too far for a direct flight -- there being no stops for fuel in the middle of the Pacific! -- so we settled on the contiguous 48 states for our adventure. Various flight routes were calculated from our home base in Provo, Utah (PVU) attempting to develop a highly efficient path. We initially focused on minimizing the amount of time that the whole trip would take, and so time became the key factor in structuring the route. Once the basic route was laid out, a few special stops were identified that we really wanted to hit. These were worked into the final 48-state route.

    A second, but lower priority goal of landing at hard-surface airports at the most extreme ends of the country -- in terms of the compass points -- was also integrated into the plan. The airports we identified were:

• International Peace Gardens, Wisconsin (S28 @ N48°59.8' W100°2.6') for most northern,
• Eastport, Maine (EPM @ N44°54.5' W67°0.7') for most eastern,
• Key West, Florida (EWY @ N24°33.4' W81°45.5') for most southern,
  and lastly,
• Quillayutte State, Washington (UIL @ N47°56.2' W124°33.7') for most western.

    And thirdly, we set a goal for making a 3-country flight in one day by departing from Canada, making a stop in the US, and arriving in Mexico. We kicked around a few ideas and settled on Victoria, British Columbia (CYYJ), Reno, Nevada (RNO), and Tijuana, Mexico (MMTJ). The Mooney easily had the range to make a direct flight to Reno, and then on to Tijuana, without additional fuel stops.

    We weren't exaclty sure how these special goals would fit into our plan after a couple of weeks of flying (knowing that Murphy always lurks nearby), but we hoped that we could sort it all out as we went along.

    This map shows our planned route, starting in Utah and continuing counter-clockwise, with special stops in red, and the extreme North, East, South, and West points in yellow:

    Now all we had to do was fix the departure date. In the meantime, Jared prepared a set of envelopes, one for each state, with the idea of mailing the appropriate envelope to himself after landing in each state, as sort of a record of the journey. After a temporary delay due to a jury-duty obligation, we were set to go on July 18, 1997. We bid our women goodbye and set our sights on the the sky and the country beneath it...