By staying right at the airport in McGregor, we thought we would be ready to go at first light, but it was not to be. We tried to depart twice before finally deciding that if we went south for about 40 miles, that we could turn east. So on the third try we were able to do a “U” shaped route into Ashland. It was another lesson for us. We picked a string of airports that were VFR and went around the ones that were IFR,