We didn't get very far today

 Thursday, June 22

After refueling this morning at Bisbee, we were ready to take off. I couldn't get my Spot tracker to work, so gave up and did the rest of my start-up checklist. It's not as though the SPOT tracker is necessary for flying. 

Passing the border wall again was depressing.

We headed northeast to intersect with I-10. It was easy flying @ 6500'. A little bumpy, but nothing startling. Dennis went up to 9000' because he said it was cooler up there. It WAS warm in my cockpit, but not too bad. The terrain is relatively flat with occasional hills popping up. Or what I call hills, since they're so much lower than the Cascades and the Siskiyous. Very, very desolate, and to me, pretty boring..

I can't imagine wanting to live so very isolated. 

Then up pops irrigated farmland. I wondered where the irrigation water came from. Probably the Colorado River. The white-topped buildings are part of a cattle feedlot. 

It was fun to fly by this playa, which reminds me of the Alvord desert. Neither Dennis nor I were willing to give up our altitude to land here.

We reached Deming, NM (KDMN) about 11 a.m. and stopped to refuel and have lunch. The courtesy van is so old and ramshackle that it doesn't even use a key to get it started: you just twist the ignition. But it got us into town.

By the time we got back to the airport, the wind had picked up considerably. I untied the plane, and as I opened the door, the nose wheel lifted off. I scrambled to get in the seat to bring the nose down again. As I sat there, going through my checklist, I watched the windsock going crazy. "Yup, gusting above 30 mph" said Dennis, when I radio'd him. "This is more than I want to fly in," I radio'd back. "I'm going to stay here." He immediately agreed that it made sense to spend the night in Deming. With the heat (95°) and the wind, neither one of us wanted to set up our tents. The FBO manager was great, telling us we were welcome to take the van and bring it back tomorrow. So we're staying at LaQuinta and planning on leaving tomorrow @ 6:30 a.m. to beat the heat and the wind.