Hey everyone,
I wanted to thank you all for all of the suggestions and replies. I'm sorry that I've been abscent the last few weeks. That is what happens when you take the first two weeks of the month off...you have to pay for it the second half.
I'll post a more detailed summary of my trip when things slow down a bit, but we made the trip the 6th through the 10th and had a great time doing it. The highlight of the trip was flying down the Hudson, past Manhattan, and around the Statue of Liberty. From there we crossed over EWR, and across PA. Weather forced us south and we found ourselves dodging tornados a day later in norhter Arkansas and bucking 30-40 knot headwinds all the way across the country. It wasn't until the last day coming up from northern AZ that we finally saw triple digit ground speeds. We figured we probably averaged around 75 knots for 97% of the trip. All in all, 2,425 miles in five days. 30.2 hours on the hobbs.
It was a lot of work, but also a great experience. I do transcons regularly, but for those you have planners doing the bulk of the work. It was fun to get back to basics and do it all yourself. We barrowed a 496 from a friend and I have to tell you, I've always been a big Garmin fan, but now I'm emphatic about it. Of course you have to know its limits, but what a great tool to have along. For all but one leg, we ended up landing somewhere else because of one reason or another and having access to the XM weather was SO nice. Now I just need to figure out how to fund the purchase of my own. But besides the 496, I also did it old school with VORs backing us up and a sectional on my lap following along with my finger. It's nice to know that time, distance, and bearing still works.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that we made the trip and we now have our new baby online for our flying club. Thanks again for all the input. I'll be saving some of the references for an OshKosh trip hopefully this year.