Will Have Flown To 48 States When Done

This morning... Captain Lewis wound along the foot of the mountain to the southwest, approaching the main stream he had left yesterday. The road was still plain, and as it led them directly on towards the mountain, the stream gradually became smaller, till after going two miles, it had so greatly diminished in width, that one of the men in a fit of enthusiasm, with one foot on each side of the river, thanked God that he has lived to bestride the Missouri. As they went along, their hopes of soon seeing the waters of the Columbia arose almost to painful anxiety, when, after four miles from the last abrupt turn of the river, they reached a small gap formed by the high mountains which recede on each side, leaving room for the Indian road.... They had now reached the hidden source of that river, which had never yet been seen by civilized man; and as they quenched their thirst at the chaste and icy fountain - as they sat down by the brink of that little rivulet, which yielded its distant and modest tribute to the parent ocean, they felt themselves rewarded for all their labors and all their difficulties.

--Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, mission journal, at the Continental Divide, August 12, 1805

When Dean Baird, of Colorado Springs (CO), celebrates his birthday next month, he'll be 83 years old. A man with a lifelong love for flying, Baird plans to give himself an early birthday present. With a logbook documenting more than 60 years of flight and a 1948 Cessna C-140 strapped around him, Baird plans to fly from St. Louis (MO) to the Pacific Ocean, retracing the steps of Lewis and Clark. When he's finished with that trek, he'll trace the edges of the US. And when he's done with that, he'll have flown to every one of the lower 48 states.

"This thing about flying into all 48 states, I've had this dream for some time," Baird said in an interview with the Knight-Ridder News Service. One hundred years after the Wright Brothers first flew, 200 years after Lewis an Clark mapped portions of the Western United States, Dean Baird is going flying.

Slow Going - Perfect For Aerial Sightseeing

Baird will certainly have time to relish his journey. The C-140 (file photo, above) is no speed demon. He'll be lucky to fly more than 100 kts. "I'll take the tent along, and I'm taking a sleeping bag," he said. He'll also bunk down with friends and family along the way.

The white-haired Colorado man was a pilot in the USAAF during WWII. After that, he taught his wife, a Navy volunteer during the war, how to fly. Together, they owned a crop-dusting business for 10 years or so. Then Baird went to work at the FAA. In 1984, Baird was inducted into the Colorado Aviators' Hall of Fame. Now, in semi-retirement, Baird is a flight instructor at the Fremont County Airport (CO).

Vena Baird is gone now. Dean's two daughters admit they're a bit antsy about the whole flying-around-the-country thing, during which Baird plans to log about 175 hours on his C-140. His biggest concern? "Weather's going to be my biggest problem, I think."

Indeed, so it was at times for Lewis and Clark.

The morning was rainy and the fog so thick that we could not see across the river.... At a distance of twenty miles from our camp, we halted at a village... behind two small marshy islands.... We had not gone far from the village when the fog burned off and we enjoyed the delightful prospect of the ocean; that ocean, the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties.... We tried to continue along the right bank (of a river); the shore, was hoever so bold and rocky, that we could not, until after going fourteen miles from the last village, find any spot for an encampment. At that distance, having made during the day thirty-four miles, we spread our mats on the ground and passed the night in the rain.

--Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, mission journal, at the Pacific Ocean, November 7, 1805

FMI: www.cessna140.com