Pilot Life: Solo Cross-Country to Cottage Grove and Back!

This week is forecasting some rather unprecedented sunny weather in October of all months and I'm going to jump at every opportunity I have! I was originally supposed to do an Instrument flight lesson with my instructor this morning, but we ended up cancelling due to morning fog that didn't burn off until the afternoon hours. So I decided to go up for a flight later in the day and made a quick round-robin cross-country out of it! And my destination: Cottage Grove, an airport I've flown to with my uncle on previous flights, albeit, not logged as I wasn't licensed at the time!

A solo cross-country to Cottage Grove in N5174E!

Following pre-flight and before-takeoff procedures, I departed Albany's Runway 34 and departed the pattern to the south. It was a fairly routine flight on my way down and back. I'm glad I picked up VFR Flight Following from Cascade Approach because I got quite a few traffic alerts from them around the Eugene-area, which was typical. I also utilized ADS-B through ForeFlight on my iPad as well, so this flight ended up being a perfect opportunity to practice my single-pilot resource management (SRM). I landed on Runway 15 in Cottage Grove, rolled out all the way to the end and exited before turning around and getting airborne off Runway 33.

From there, I made my way back up to Albany, keeping in radio contact with the Cascade Approach controller. I made an uneventful landing back on Runway 34 in Albany. After a quick taxi over to the fuel pumps, I topped off the fuel tanks, and then taxied the plane back to my uncle's hangar, where I put it away and called it a successful cross-country flight. The weather for flying this afternoon/evening was just perfect!