Aviate, Navigate, Communicate

I finally flew my first solo cross country Tuesday afternoon. It was hot, hazy, bumpy and windy...but, I knew I had to get it done. I learned a lot and I learned that there's even more that I still don't know. Luckily, the process of filing flight plans with FSS wasn't nearly as difficult as I feared. So, I have calmed down about that aspect of cross countries. Another positive, was that I handled the whole flight from start to finish for the first time by myself...first time I had done the runup for example. Everything went perfectly for a while. It was hazier than I thought it would be and it was hotter than hell, 96 degrees when I took off at 3:15. My instructor told me to call my inbound to Perryville at St. Genevieve, but I never saw the little town and the next thing I knew I saw the bridge over the Mississippi which alerted me that I was approaching K02. I was cruising at 3500 feet to find some cooler air, so I had to drop altitude fairly quickly...K02 sits at 372 MSL. I cruised around the south end of the runway, confirmed that the winds were still coming strong out of the south by looking at the windsock...the runway there is really long, 7,000 feet, so I had plenty of time to lose altitude on my downwind run...it was weird landing on a runway over 3x as long and 2x as wide as my home base! I felt like I was landing on the moon. After I landed it took me forever to taxi down to the little taxiway and turn around. After I pulled off the runway I took the pic you see above of myself. You can see the sweat soaking through my shirt on my chest and note that my window is open. I drained half of my big water bottle, took 2 more pics and back taxied back down runway 20. I called myself departing and took off for home. After I was in the air a bit, I wasn't sure looking at my radio, that I had ever really been communicating....so that was spooky to me. Then I never did figure out the VOR's I thought I had set up and I never was able to program the GPS! Finally, I was never able to tune in the AWOS wx frequency in Farmington either. So, I wasn't communicating (maybe), I wasn't really navigating (except by pilotage, which is easy thanks to the Mississippi River), but I was aviating pretty well....for now. As a student pilot you get the priorities pounded into your head: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate....so basically don't crash, if your not crashing, figure out where you are and if you know where you are and your not in a spin or close to it...communicate! It was hazier and hotter on my return trip...I only went up to about 2500 feet for the return. Coming back to KFES, it looked like I was trying to land on a carrier...the big runway at K02 had me all messed up and I came in too hot on my landing and had to do a go around due to too much floating in ground effect. My instructor coached me through it on the handheld and reminded to take the flaps off 10 degrees at a time so that I didn't "drop like a rock"...I looked down at the flap control, but I had already taken all 20 degrees off...but I didn't drop too much and went around the pattern again and this time landed smoothly...Paul got my confidence back up, announcing good go-around and good landing over the handheld. I called FSS, closed my flight plan and even though it was tough, I passed another milestone on my amazingly difficult climb up my Everest!