An easy ride home

Coming home from Santa Fe was much easier than the trip out.  Santa Fe still had weather but the morning forecast was for good VFR.  We fired up early and were airborne around 8:00 AM.  The airport was VFR and all the mountains clearly visible.  There was a line of storms from Las Vegas, NM to South of Amarillo, Texas.  It looked pretty soft from a distance.

I had filed IFR but starting just past the mountains so that we could pick it up enroute.  We checked in with departure, let them know our plan regarding the rain and then told them we could take the IFR when available.  He said it would be a few minutes and we started skirting North of the rain.  It was in 2 bunches an my plan was to slide through the middle if it stayed light.

After a while the controller said he had forgotten to give me our IFR but we could have it now.  He cleared us, we descended to 9000 and continued.  As we thought, we could cross the rain in the middle and though we did get wet, we never went IFR.  Our first stop was North Texas Regional just North East of Dallas.  Good self serve, clean facilities and they pushed candy, cookies and water on us.  An A+ in my book.

We had enjoyed 10+ knots tailwind and heading out it picked up a bit and we were easily making better than 200 knots all the way to Meridian Mississippi.  Again an easy stop.  I asked for a quick turn and they had the plane fueled almost too fast.  Meridian is famous for their snacks.  I barely had time to have some ice cream and grab a banana.  

Our final hop home we kept the tailwind but a few showers had popped up.  They were easy to navigate around and between our eyes and the radar we just had a few quick trips through some clouds before arriving home.  The total time airborne was 6:36 which was 1:36 less than the way out.   Yes we had to cut our trip short but that's another story.