When planning this whole trip Westbound before Christmas, it looked like a long trip. Now, few flights and weeks later, I am realizing this trip is coming to its end as I am studying the 1961 approach chart for San Francisco, the destination of this endeavor.
I feel happy. And I feel sad.
The airport serving San Francisco went through a similar history as some other airports visited during this flight. Before it opened for passenger traffic, USPS operated mail service from 1927 from a 150 acres of land leased from a local farmer Ogden Mills. And this is where the airport got its first name Mills Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco.
In the 1930s, the airport grew in size and in 1937 the first terminal - in Spanish Revival Colonial style - was inaugurated.
During World War II, the airport was used as a Coast Guard base and Army Air Corps training and staging base and after the war, it started to serve international destinations. The new terminal building was built in 1954, so technically it was still not there when I arrived yesterday evening 
As you can imagine, the airport boomed with the arrival of jet-era at the end of 1950s. Fast forward, in 2022, KSFO ranked as nr 14 busiest airport in the USA.
With my hair rising departure from fogged-over Salt Lake City and similarly exciting arrival to Reno, this time I wanted to do better. Getting hands on vintage approach charts is not an easy task though, but fortunately there are some rare sources out there - like the one I posted few days back. I was able to find 1964 SID from Reno, 1956 San Francisco / Oakland Area, and 1962 approach chart to rwy 28 in San Francisco!
It looked like I was adequately equipped for this last leg. So when the timetable called for an evening departure, I felt reasonably comfortable and asked for dry take off power…
Calm evening with good weather; for a change.
Grand Sierra Resort and Casino offering some 1900 rooms. It was built in 1978, so I pretended I did not see it (remember, I am replicating a 1953 timetable).
The Sparks Five departure wants me to cross Sparks NDB at or above 8500 ft. Looking at the hill right in front of me I kinda understand why.
Fortunately when being overhead Sparks NDB (see the ADF needle swapping sides?), I was almost at 8500 ft.
Good bye Reno… and off to the darkness.
Sacramento. The timetable suggests this flight made a stop over there… though I decided to make it direct to San Francisco.
Briefing for the arrival over Oakland VOR followed by flying over Fremont and LOM NDBs. Both of them are gone for a long time… so not in the stock sim 
Oakland
Flying towards Fremont NDB. How do I know? Because I brought the missing navaids to MSFS!
Tracking towards LOM. Here I was a bit behind the aircraft (shame after all the hours spent in the DC-6, I know) as I was too late in calculating the descent and deceleration. If you can make it in the dark screenshot, the airframe is still clean. In retrospective, I should have just flown one holding pattern as actually depicted on the approach chart above.
Well, I did not 
Turning final (good altitude and speed) and landing.
Down and waiting for the champagne and red carpet
(neither was available, though)
Well, so I made it from the East of the USA to the West. It took 7 legs and almost 2500 nm. I managed to put in use a number of navigation techniques (CelNav, flying the beam, VOR-to-VOR), learn something new about the airports along my way, admire the landscape and get more at ease with the DC-6. I failed though in being able to operate the DC-6 completely on my own. That is OK as it leaves room for further achievements in my future travels in this aircraft.
Now it is time to relax and think what next?
What next… while this is my last AAR of flying the DC-6 on this historically correct route, I can think of paying a visit to Catalina Island (not sure the runway is long enough, though… but I can think of one particular way to find out) and then continuing to Alaska which is another part of the World I always wanted to visit in the sim… and never found the time.
Perhaps now
Once you notice some screenshots of a DC-6 over Alaska, you will know why.
Thanks all for following this thread, encouraging me and providing additional contextual info.
