In June of 2007 my dad found out that his friend Scott was going to South Dakota to see his brother like he does every year. My Dad figured that since he has wanted to take a trip for a while that we would go with him and take our four place air plane that Dad and I built. On the morning of take off my Dad took one last check on the airplane and the weather then we got ready to take off. The weather looked pretty good but knowing that we were flying over the plains there were probably going to be gnarly thunder storms even though the weather said that we would not. Our trip was uneventful until we left Idaho and that is when our problems began.


When we left Idaho and crossed into the Wyoming border the thunder storms could be seen every where and the sky all dark and grey. I could look out my left window and see a thunder storms rage from at least twenty miles away and that is when my dad said “We have got to land and think about what to do”. Another thing was that the GPS quit working frequently while we were flying and this time Dad could not seem to reboot it so we had to land for a little bit and think things through. When we landed decided to get gas. We stopped at the gas pumps and didn’t see anybody around. As I looked around I could see thunder and lightning storms to the North East. Just when we were wondering if someone was going to come out a guy came out and filled the plane with gas for us then we went inside so Dad could call the guy that the GPS belonged to. Dad seemed to be getting nowhere. Then Scott said that he could help Dad navigate by map.


The Thunder storms cleared a little bit and then we took off. Then once in the sky Scott navigated while Dad flew the airplane. With a little bit of help with Scott navigating us we finally made it across the Wyoming border and into South Dakota. Once across the border things seemed to get clearer. I could see the ground well. The ground looked like the ground in New Mexico. Scott mention that the dirt when wet turns a yellowish color and if hiking in it the mud sticks to your boot and is near impossible to get off. After a half hour across the border and miserable storms and bumps we finally made it to Pierre, South Dakota. Dad radioed in to land and Said it could be a bumpy landing and it kind of was. When we taxied to the tie downs I tied down the airplane. After a few minutes Scott’s brother showed up. As we set down our bags Scott’s brother was like “That was probably one heck of rough ride through Wyoming, huh?