What day is it?

Well plans sure changed yesterday. After spending 3 nights in Youngstown, OH (YNG) we were able to get moving again but not in the direction we had planned. The plan was to go North at the end of Lake Erie and go up the Michigan peninsula. The big high pressure that is covering the middle of the country has stalled a front over the upper Midwest. So the forecast up there was looking to be continued crap.

The other option, which is probably a shorter distance, is to go West to Chicago and then North into Wisconsin. That's what we tried. Late in the morning after waiting for the fog and haze to burn off we headed West towards Kankakee, IL (IKK). We had a number of alternate airports in mind along the way in case we didn't like what we saw weather wise. We went past Mansfield, OH and then the clouds got thick so we did a 180 and went back to Mansfield (MFD) for the night.

Today's plan was to continue to Kankakee and then maybe North to Waupaca, WI (PCZ). The weather was a little hazy but not bad. We did have a headwind today, so the ground speed was only 85-88 knots instead of the 115 we had been doing. Three hours after leaving Mansfield we landed in Kankakee.

It was very hot in Kankakee this afternoon, high 90's. The airport elevation is 630 feet but with the high temp and humidity the density altitude was around 3,800 feet. That means density of the air was equivalent to a 3,800 foot elevation. The runway at IKK is just under 6,000 feet long so it was plenty long enough. There were storms near Rockford so we stopped for the day. Here is a photo of the radar screen.

We have about another 220 miles to get to Waupaca, which is where we will park the plane while we go to the Airventure show. The forecast for the next few days has 30-40% chances of thunder storms so we may be here until Sunday or Monday. We might try to take that in smaller bits but we'll see.

We have now flown off the New York sectional chart and the Detroit sectional chart.

You want pictures? Here they are.

Some Packards.

The Scrappers!

Clouds (in case you couldn't tell).

45A tied down for the night in Mansfield.

On a culinary note, we found O'Charley's in Youngstown. It was very good. Pete had a California Salad and Dan had Salmon that was cooked on a cedar plank. It was a great pre-baseball dinner. As luck would have it, there was also one in Mansfield. So we ate at O'Charley's two nights in a row, in two different towns! If there is one near you, check it out (Turkey Lake and Sand Lake).