"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
[...]
In all cases, if I've come back with something like, "We're going to be
maneuvering in the area of X for a while", or "We're going to be
following X, Y, and Z", (no matter how absurd or circuitous that path
might have been), that's seem to satisfy the controller.

Exactly. That was my point. The controller doesn't care, and has no reason
to care, why you pick a particular route. They just want to know what the
route is (and much of time, they aren't too terribly concerned about that
either, if you're VFR).

Pete