USA Coast to Coast – the first long distance flying adventure.
The weather forecast for the dawning day was poor, and while it should be possible to fly, it was impossible to know how far we’d get. As my father’s flight home was from Atlanta in just one days time, he elected to rent a car and drive to Atlanta, so he waved us off as we took off and headed east through the low cloud and drizzle. The weather wasn’t great, but over the low flat country it was possible…
We stayed that night at a Motel in Carlsbad, and the next day made our arrival in the grand state of Texas! It turned out to be almost as big as Texans like to claim it is. We stopped first at a small airport called Andrews in order to stock up on cheaper fuel. To welcome us to Texas, an angry prairie dog chattered away at us while we refueled; at least, until it was drowned out by a rude…
The Salton Sea lies just northeast of Borrego, and was on our route the next morning. This inland sea lies around 200 feet below global sea level. Our next stop was Lake Havasu City, a planned city on a lake shore in Arizona. The town excavated a channel from the lake, around a peninsular, to create an island; across which they placed London Bridge, purchased from the UK and shipped, brick by brick, to the USA. We toured the “English…
Waking up to a frosty morning, we packed up and made our way back to the shuttle-bus. We arrived back in town to discover that another shuttle-bus was running services to the airport that day; it turned out that the airport was celebrating its 70th anniversary with a fly-in. There were hundreds of people there, with 50 or 60 aircraft having flown in from all over the country. We were asked where we had flown in from, and told them…
The next day, predictably, involved a great many large trees; they are well worth a visit! We started off the day with a visit to Fern Canyon, a canyon in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. It’s recognised as a World Heritage site and International Biosphere Reserve. You can take a boardwalk through the canyon to view the fern covered walls and other native flora and fauna. In the afternoon we took a walk through a grove of fully grown…
The Las Vegas controller was busier than any I had known before, and we were told to head West, stay low, and shut up; I gladly complied. We left the madness far behind us and proceeded up the Nevada/California border towards Mono Lake – at an elevation of 6,802 feet this was the highest airport we would land at. Mono Lake is one of the best locations that I have flown into. There’s basically nothing there, and that’s what made…
We spent another night in a Super 8 motel, and a return to the airport to see about crossing the Rockies. I had decided to avoid heading straight through the mountains; the highest you are allowed to fly without oxygen systems is 12,500ft, and this would put us well down in the canyons doing real mountain flying. I was not trained for this so we headed south to New Mexico and the beautiful city of Santa Fe. We refueled immediately…
Travelling by air, even in a comparatively slow single engine aircraft, you cover ground surprisingly quickly. Just a few days after we set off, we were entering the Great Plains, America’s agricultural heartland. We deliberately flew north of a direct route in order to see these plains, and the sheer scale of them was certainly impressive! After the 5th or 6th hour of flying across them, though, the novelty began to wear off. We diverted from our planned destination in…
A few days after returning from Key West, it was time to set off on the main adventure. We packed up the house in Sarasota, and set off for Palm Beach County Park Airport which we had already visited a couple of days before to perform the rental checkout with a Palm Beach Flight Training instructor. We loaded up our C172 SP, N961MC (known from then on as Mike Charlie) with our gear, which I had weighed the night before…
Key West is a fantastic destination for a pilot. There is enough to keep you busy for a few days, including historical tours of the town, the aquarium, and boat trips to the reef and also the Dry Tortugas. The home of Ernest Hemingway is worth a visit, and is still inhabited by his six-toed cats. There is even an annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike competition, which lends a surreal element to the town for a few days. However, on this…