N291DR 3.6 Attempt (!) to fly KRHV KCMA

The mission today was to visit my friend at KCMA. The Wx was quite calm, but there were some possible low clouds in between. I briefed and set out.

South of Hollister, I encountered a broken layer over the hills, and the valleys completely socked in. In particular, the IFR over the valleys meant that a lot of the intermediate airports along the way were not accessible.

I chose to fly under the broken clouds for as long as seemed safe, always keeping a valley with ranches and open fields underneath me. I kept at it for a while, but it became clear that the terrain was rising and the clouds weren't, and they seemed to stretch out for a long distance ahead. I decided to abort.

Of course, this meant a long journey back whence I came, since (again...) all the intermediate airports were socked in. This was tedious but uneventful. I chose to go to Salinas because it was a tiny bit closer than Hollister and I wanted to be done. I fueled up there, then puttered back to KRHV.

Some of my friends tell me I could probably have pressed on, given that I had lots of options. Maybe I should have? The thing is, though, shortly after the point where I turned back, I would be "bingo fuel": I would not have enough fuel to safely get back to Salinas or Holister. So what if my next waypoint, New Cuyama, was fogged in, or inaccessible? I would have had to take an out-landing in a cow pasture on one of the valleys. Which is completely something I could do and things would most likely be fine -- there would be a small risk to the plane from hitting a rock or cowpie, but nearly none to myself. But, I'd have some explaining to do. And maybe there'd be one more rancher angry about all these annoying airplanes.

Total landings -- two. One in Salinas and one in Reid-Hillview.