Musings: Route 66 to Sedona
Two pilots and their bucket list journey to be married
By Sue Van Liere
When my husband, Randy, and I became engaged last year, we knew the typical wedding was not what we wanted. We are general aviation pilots; we wanted to tie our passion for aviation into our wedding. The plan was to launch from our home base in Hastings, Michigan; intercept Route 66 in central Illinois; and follow the highway southwest, making several stops along the way. Our destination was Sedona, Arizona, where we would be married.
Traveling Route 66 by air was unique. Small-town GA airports on the route added character and offered more to the nostalgic flavor than traveling by car would have.
Our ride, a 1946 North American Navion, was a project airplane Randy purchased in pieces and restored over the course of several years. Since his college days, Randy had admired the red, white, and blue paint scheme of the P–51 Reno racer, Miss America. Toward the end of the Navion restoration project, Randy contacted Miss America’s owner, Dr. Brent Hisey, to obtain permission to copy the paint scheme. It has been a long-time bucket list item of Randy’s to see the two airplanes side by side.
Randy had emailed Brent and told him we’d be passing through Oklahoma City, where he resides, and asked if a meeting would be possible. The morning after our arrival at Wiley Post Airport, Brent picked us up at our hotel. He was wearing blue scrubs and explained that he had a surgery scheduled later that day.
As we pulled up to the hangar, we saw the P–51 sitting on the ramp next to our Navion. I glanced at Randy. The emotion he felt upon seeing the two North American sisters together was apparent in his expression. Brent flew in formation with us so we could capture photos of Miss America from the air. It was surreal seeing that beautiful old girl flying beside us in midair. Bucket list: surpassed.
The stretch of highway from Oklahoma to Arizona offered an endless array of Route 66 attractions. We spray-painted our initials on a Cadillac buried in procession in a cornfield in Amarillo, Texas; admired the neon lights of the famous Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico; stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona—such a fine sight to see—and spent a night in a teepee in the Wigwam Motel, in Holbrook, Arizona.
The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest near Holbrook from our vantage point in the air reminded us of what it must be like flying over the surface of Mars. Circling above the giant Meteor Crater offered a perspective that one could never achieve by car.
Reaching our destination, Randy checked off another bucket list item: landing at Sedona Airport. The runway, perched high on a mesa with sheer drops on either end and surrounded by the red rocks of Sedona, demanded an approach unlike any we had ever flown. The view on final was so remarkable that I forgot to be nervous.
There was one more item on our aviation bucket list to accomplish: a flight over the Grand Canyon. Nothing could have prepared us for the experience of crossing the rim and soaring out over the vast expanse. The cockpit grew silent as we took in the magnitude of it all.
Our wedding day arrived on July 18, and the ceremony took place on the Sedona Airport ramp next to our Navion. Sedona’s airport manager, Amanda Shankland, served as one of our witnesses. We could not have asked for a more perfect way or better venue to become co-pilots for life. What a magical journey it was.
For more information, including airports, attractions, and photos, visit Sue’s blog.
Related Articles
