Even as I was building my AirCam, Cloud Chaser, I was fantasizing about the ways I would use it to explore and take pictures.

  In 2003, after two years of intense research and three years after completing the plane, I took off in it on an adventure to retrace the journey of Lewis and Clark and to try and accomplish my dream. A dream that I would compile into a photo and adventure book of the trip, Chasing Lewis & Clark Across America: A 21^st Century Aviation Adventure.

  As I sat on the runway in St. Louis, ready for take off, I contemplated whether I would return to this spot in three months with a trailer full of aircraft parts. Or would Cloud Chaser and I emerge from the wilderness tempered by the fire of adventure and bearing the photographic and personal testimony I sought?

  For three months and 14,000 miles, accompanied by a ground crew in RV’s, I flew every mile of the Missouri River, following a watery highway across the heartland of the country, through the wildest parts of Montana, crossing the Rockies and tracing the Columbia River to emerge at the Pacific Ocean.

  Every spot that I photographed along this journey was carefully researched for two years prior to the trip, “flying” the whole route from comfort of my office chair. Using 3D mapping software and satellite imagery, I noted each spot that I thought had good photographic possibilities. Once I was actually airborne, each picture was just as meticulously scouted from the air. Flying up and down the rivers, looking for those “perfect” spots accounts for the 14,000 miles and 200 hours of flying between St. Louis and the Pacific Ocean.

  This flying was not like what I do at home in Tennessee. On this adventure, I landed at airports small and large. In the Missouri Breaks, that “wild” area of Montana, a rancher graciously allowed me to use his small grass strip. He even carved me a new landing strip the day before with his bulldozer. “You’re the first one to land on that,” he commented as I touched down with a teeth-rattling roll across the bulldozer tracks.

  His strip, however, was essential to getting the shots I wanted in this area. There are no airports within a hundred miles of the spot I had marked to photograph. However, his ranch was situated within fifteen flying minutes of the Missouri Breaks, so I could be airborne before dawn and flying over the multi-hued cliffs just as the sun came over the horizon, instead of a long flight in the dark (and did I mention cold?). By the way, dawn in Montana in the middle of the summer means getting up around 3:30. I would grab a quick breakfast, layer on some clothes, pre-flight the plane and get airborne.

  When I returned from the morning photo flight, my routine was to plug the chip into the computer and download the morning’s work. About a month before the trip, I made the switch to a high-end professional digital camera after forty years of shooting film.

  My planning before the trip led to the purchase of an RV which carried the ground crew. My wife, Sue, and son Ryan pulled the 32’ mobile campsite with a diesel truck that also carried my fuel. For the whole trip, I was able to use auto gas and not once had to put AV gas into Cloud Chaser. As we traveled, we would pick an airport meeting point the night before, then Sue and Mary Walker, also a pilot and writer on the project, would follow me in the RVs. We would camp, sometimes right at the airport and spend a couple of days doing early morning and late evening photography.

  One of my most nervous moments was teaching Mary to fly Cloud Chaser. While she is an accomplished pilot, instrument rated, no one else had ever been at the controls but me! After adding a sandbag to counteract her light, 120 lb. weight, and a couple of practice landings, she learned quickly and I was able to get air-to-air shots of Cloud Chaser dipping through a canyon above the river. My other concerns were about the fragility of the plane— while on the ground. We had theorized that rain would halt our travels but it was heat, wind and fire that had more impact on our adventure. Winds, especially in the Columbia Gorge, were a constant consideration. On the return trip, a severe forest fire season in Montana made hopping around the TFRs like a game of Tiddlywinks.

  Despite all my concerns, the plane performed flawlessly. On a hot day in September, almost three months to the day after we left, we made our final landing back in Collegedale, Tennessee, Cloud Chaser’s home. Still in one piece, the plane had allowed me do what many people only dream about on this trip.

  Although many of my relatives referred to is as our “vacation” I have never worked so hard and been so focused (no photography pun intended) in my life. That is, until we began the process of producing the book of these photographs. Many thanks to Lockwood Aviation/Rotax as one of the sponsors of the trip and one of the many people that made this adventure possible.

  When I first started flying kit-built aircraft, my main objective was to explore and do photography. At that time I had no idea how aviation was going to impact me as an artist. It took lots of hours for me to get comfortable flying thousands of feet above the ground in this thing that resembles a canoe.

  Ron Lowery, along with writer Mary Walker, has published the photographs and adventure story from this trip into a book, Chasing Lewis & Clark Across America: A 21^st Century Aviation Adventure.  For more information you can visit the website www.chasinglewisandclark.com. Their trip was featured in the January issue of Aviation & Business Journal, a publication found in most FBO offices. He is currently traveling the country doing audiovisual presentations about the trip.