The next day dawned clear and sunny. Thankfully Juvy had managed to keep the snoring to a minimum and I’d had a decent nights rest. We returned the crew car to the airport with thanks, and pre-flighted the Arrow for the penultimate day of the trip. Our first destination would be an interesting little town called Wall which Juvy had told me about. It was only about a 30 minute flight across the plains from Hot Springs. We took off,…
I packed up my Russian River camp site once again, and hauled everything back to the aircraft. I took off and pointed the Arrow’s nose east, towards Yolo County Airport. Along the way there were a number of interesting things to see; the first was what seemed to be a large natural gas installation, with multiple wells along the hill tops all being fed back to a central processing facility. The second, which I had deliberately set out to visit,…
The following morning, we packed up our tents and breakfasted on some of our newly gifted fruits. We wandered in to town and checked out a few of the cheesy tourist shops offering up such delights as Pina Colada salt water taffy. We carried on down to the beach, and spent a while relaxing in the morning sunshine watching surfers and horse riders enjoying the southern California lifestyle. It certainly seemed like a wonderful life; surfing in the morning, and…
We were up early, and enjoyed a simple breakfast at the hotel buffet. After watching a baby rabbit playing on the lawn for a few minutes, we jumped into the hotel shuttle and were dropped back off at the airport. Pre-flight checks revealed that all was in order, so we chose the into wind runway, and took off to head for our first stop of the day, Page. This airport sits at the top of the Grand Canyon, and would…
To maximise our travel time, and quickly get across the “boring bits” of flat farmland that characterise the central US states, Juvy and I set out one evening after work in our flying club’s 1971 Piper Arrow. Of the six aircraft in the club, this was the best suited for travelling cross-country; retractable undercarriage and a 200hp engine gave it by far the best speed in the fleet. We departed from Zelienople airport, just north of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania where…