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Flying Round The World
 
Mission 3 Grand Tour of the USA
Part 1 Seattle to Sioux Falls (5 flights through 5 states)
 
 
All the photos featuring the aircraft are screenshots in the simulator.
There is a camera in the cockpit and a drone camera that follows the aircraft.
The video of each flight is an edited version of highlights of about 5 minutes duration.
   

This is the flight from Seattle to Lewiston on 28/6/21 in the Citation Longitude business jet.
The distance was 234nm and it was flown at an altitude of 13,000 ft in clear weather.
It was a good flight over the Cascade mountain range landing in Lewiston at an elevation of 1442 ft.
 


 

 

 

 

Underground tunnels.

The city was burned to the ground in 1889. It was rebuilt on top of the old to overcome drainage issues of the old city. You can walk beneath the streets and see the preserved sidewalks and store fronts that survived the fire.
 

Snoqualmie Falls

One of Washington State's most popular scenic attractions, Snoqualmie Falls is a 270 foot waterfall surrounded by a two-acre park, with an observation deck and Lodge. This is by far the most famous waterfall in Washington, receiving more visitors than almost any other single natural feature in the state.
 

The next days flight is from Lewiston to Great Falls Montana in the Citation Longitude business jet.
The distance was 290nm and it was flown at an altitude of 17,000 ft in fair weather.
Bumpy flight over the mountains of Idaho and a heavy landing in Gt Falls at an elevation of 3680 ft. There are high winds in these northern states at present making for challenging landings.
 


 

 

Lewiston was founded in 1861 in the wake of a gold rush which began the previous year near Pierce, northeast of Lewiston.
It is located at the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater River, thirty miles (50 km) upstream and southeast of the Lower Granite Dam.
Lewiston's main industries are agriculture, paper, and timber products, light manufacturing and ammunition manufacturing.
 


For thousands of years Idaho was inhabited by Native American peoples. It covers two time zones, runs from Canada to Nevada, and encompasses the western side of the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains.
Rivers, mountains and farmland dominate the state’s landscape. The panhandle has emerald green hillsides, timbered mountains and pristine lakes.

 

This is the flight from Great Falls Montana to Sheridan Wyoming on the 30/6/21 in the Citation Longitude business jet.
The distance was 245nm and it was flown at an altitude of 17,000 ft in Scattered Clouds .
It was a good flight, again over mountains, in and out of clouds landing in Sheridan at an elevation of 4000 ft.
 


 

 

Great Falls straddles the Missouri River and is known as the "Electric City" because of its numerous dams and power plants.

Great Falls is a community with grand traditions, rich history and superb recreational and cultural amenities. It is named for a series of five waterfalls located on the Missouri River north and east of the city and is home to the headquarters of the Little Shell Chippewa tribe, and has the largest urban Native American population in Montana, with several tribes represented. As the first people in this region, many Native American historic, and cultural sites are present in Great Falls and the surrounding area.
 

Montana is slightly larger than Japan. It is the fourth-largest state in the United States after Alaska.

There's gold – and more – in those hills. Rich deposits of minerals, including gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, coal and oil, earned Montana its nickname as the Treasure State.

Montana has a large population of grizzly bears.
 

This is the flight from Sheridan to Rapid City South Dakota on 1/7/21 in the Citation Longitude business jet.
The distance was 195nm and it was flown at an altitude of 17,000 ft over mountains and in clear weather.
It was another good flight with strong cross winds landing heavy in Rapid City at an elevation of 3204 ft.
 


 

 

 

 

Sheridan, Wyoming is located at an elevation of 3,743 feet in Goose Creek Valley in the north-central part of the state. The city is in the Tongue River watershed ten miles north and east of the Big Horn Mountains, in the ancestral homeland of the Crow people.

The city was named after General Philip Sheridan, Union cavalry leader in the American Civil War. Several battles between US Cavalry and the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Crow Indian tribes occurred in the area in the 1860s and 1870s before the town was built.
Sheridan has a strong rodeo culture that draws from ranching history as well as a tradition of catering to the wild-west entertainment

 

Wyoming's western half is mostly covered by the ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountains, while the eastern half of the state is high-elevation prairie called the High Plains.

It is drier and windier than the rest of the country, being split between semi-arid and continental climates with greater temperature extremes.
 

This is the flight from Rapid City to Sioux Falls on 2/7/21 in the Citation Longitude business jet.
The distance was 279nm and it was flown at an altitude of 7,000 ft in cloudy weather.
It was a good flight over the whole width of flat South Dakota in deteriorating weather, with another bad landing in Sioux Falls at an elevation of 1430 ft and a 30 knot cross wind.
 


 

 

 

 

Mount Rushmore is located near Rapid City. Majestic figures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, carved into the granite rock face, surrounded by the beauty of the Black Hills of South Dakota, tell the story of the birth, growth, development and preservation of this country.

The creation of Mount Rushmore is a story of struggle — and to some, desecration. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota Sioux, the original occupants of the area when white settlers arrived. ... In the Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government promised the Sioux territory that included the Black Hills in perpetuity.
 
 

 
End of Part 1