Postcards

An airplane, a tent, and two weeks to explore the country

Have you ever wondered about just topping off and crossing the whole country, exploring the geographic fabric of America? It's not difficult to fly beyond your sectional into new horizons. For my wife and me, it's become a summer ritual in our Grumman Cheetah. Some families spend two weeks in the mountains or at the beach; we explore the whole country.

In planning our summer 1997 trip, Maureen and I found that our fallback housing of tent, air mattress, and bedding added only 15 pounds. Most small airports accommodate camper pilots, and many provide courtesy cars to other facilities. Your actual flight course can be determined daily by weather and local interest, while briefing with flight service and consulting a guidebook.

We had full tanks, fresh oil and filter, and new charts. Our goal was to make a safe trip across America, noting the stops and taking photos. The course from our base in Stoney Creek, Connecticut, was roughly westward around high terrain and thunderstorms. Though zero/zero at dawn on departure day, by noon flight service characterized the muggy, tepid sky as VFR. We launched into the smoky pall, with ground gray and black below, and brighter haze above. With visual references distorted in scud, our VOR and GPS needles confirmed accurate navigation. Following above a road might have been easier, but the heavily populated New York area offered only a spider web of highways.

[Maureen's comments appear in italics.]

Flying on cloudy days made me anxious in the past. My student cross-country flights took place in decent weather, with good ceilings and visibility. Suddenly, as a new private pilot, I was trying to manage a level course during my first encounter with scud. It was hard to distinguish between cloud and horizon, and the view ahead resembled a steamed-up shower door.

If flight service hadn't been predicting better visibility ahead, landing would have been a more viable option. Farms replaced suburbs in Pennsylvania where contours changed to shades of green, rather than gray. It was another hour of haze until the Susquehanna River appeared, snaking between rolling hills along our course. Green mountains and a horizon made flying easier. After a second grueling hour, the abandoned Piper factory and its runway along the river at Lock Haven signaled our first stop. We were hot, tired, and sweaty, but relief washed over us. It felt great to be on the ground, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches from home tasted wonderful. Soon, Maureen discovered the Piper Museum down the hall.

My student flying was in Cherokees, so the history of Piper drew me into the shadows of the museum. Switching lights on, you see decades of pictures about the factory, planes, and people, from shop floor to the Piper family. A faded sign suggested that the museum was moving across the runway into a factory building [the move occurred later in 1997]. While we had been invited to pitch our tent, flight service lured us aloft, promising just haze across Ohio - and no thunderstorms.

Crossing the Ohio River a few miles beyond Pittsburgh, I wondered about colonial pioneers in canoes exploring the wilds of Ohio and Kentucky. Water traffic is still important; those barges below could float to Louisiana, or farther. After the scud tension, it was a pleasure to mark off Ohio towns along the blacktop below. Sporadically, ATC called, reminding us that radar was still watching. Along a busy interstate, just after Columbus and in a sea of cornstalks, we landed at Madison County Airport. Had it been only two hours since Lock Haven? It's just one long runway and some metal hangars, but it represents a snapshot of flying around our nation. As in thousands of little towns, a friendly, modest airport awaits you. Whether pumping gas or polishing their own airplane, aviators welcome strangers. On the tarmac across America pilots still accept and extend trust to one another. Madison County sold avgas for $1.80 and had the best bathroom airplane wallpaper we'd seen. There, too, it was possible to camp on the lawn or admire Luscombes, Cessna 172s, and biplanes. But it was sunset, and we had a place a bit farther in mind.

Twenty minutes later, a helpful controller cleared us through the airspace around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, steering our Grumman away from lumbering Lockheed C-130 military transports practicing touch and goes. There, "Wright" meant that the airfield was established by Orville and Wilbur to teach the first flight students.

So much for nice weather. A nasty convective front trapped us in Ohio forthe next two days. Finally, zero/zero swapped with a haze over the patchwork of farms. Fascinated by this tableau of Americana, a couple of hours passed quickly. Soon, we saw fighters below - on a ramp too small to be an air base. Heritage-In-Flight Museum in Lincoln, Illinois, was a treat where friendly volunteers pumped bargain gas and were thrilled to tell tales about flying warbirds in World War II and Korea.

With better weather, I actually began to enjoy being a real pilot. Seeing different terrain wasn't like my student cross-country flights. Little things became important. The summer heat required a water bottle, and my headphones pressed my sunglasses into my temples. When I saw a spiffy metal-frame pair displayed in the warbird museum, I bought them right away, solving the headset problem.

The briefer forecast thunderstorms in Iowa and southwestern Missouri, but a clear path westward to Kansas. The archetypical green checkerboard spread beneath us, now larger in full one-mile sections. New crops, bordered by roads, drew grids in any direction. Pilots used to irregular landmarks frequently become disoriented here. Glance outside after performing a cockpit chore and you're lost. Which square was it? Years ago a wise pilot advised that farms were platted by compass, with the boundaries north and south or east and west. That's why barnstormers preferred the Midwest - it was easy navigation with ample emergency fields for cranky engines.

Lulled by the drone of the engine and the smooth air, I wasn't prepared for the Mississippi to sneak up below. Suddenly the big brown river crossed our course. It was a thrill to have flown so far to such a landmark. Adding to the surprise, a replica riverboat meandered upstream; it was right out of Tom Sawyer.

Near Kansas City, a small airport at Harrisonville, Missouri, alongside a highway with a few motels and cafes seemed the right place to stop. A Cessna 152 shared the pattern with us, and while we gassed up, we met the rest of the family. The adult son was perfecting his landings for his first solo the next day. Dad had sold a farm and decided to invest in the whole family's learning to fly. Every weekend, they would sit with coolers by the hangar and take lessons one after another. Excited by each other's progress, they were already reading "aircraft for sale" ads, looking for the future family airplane.

Morning television programs pictured an afternoon front of thunderstorms moving up from Texas. We flew over to AlliedSignal's Bendix/King Avionics manufacturing facility in Olathe, Kansas, where avionics are assembled in hospital cleanliness, while bright people in lab coats toy with computer test equipment, attempting to develop smaller, even more capable avionics. Fascinating, but horizons to the south blackened. Could we escape a storm from Texas by going up into Nebraska?

I had never considered the complexity of the design and manufacture of avionics that we use all the time, but the King facilities im-pressed me with dedication and company morale. The Texas storm frightened me, however, and I didn't relax until flying into twilight 200 miles north.

At the North Platte, Nebraska, airport, we considered staying - and visiting - Buffalo Bill's mansion, but the flight service briefer worried us about that Texas storm and other convective menaces. Chancing another hour of aerial progress westward, we followed the Platte River toward Sidney, Nebraska. Maureen and I speculated about Lewis and Clark on this waterway nearly 200 years before. Sixty years later, by the 1870s, steamboats brought Conestoga wagons and Custer's troops. Prairie extended into the horizon from each river bank; it couldn't have changed much, except for villages replacing tepees. Sidney was established by the fort that lodged cavalry and by the railroad transporting cattle.

Today, a stagnated farm economy has preserved Sidney's frontier roots and Victorian storefronts. At the main intersection, a 1930s-era neon sign identified the drugstore. On the tin ceiling were bullet holes from gunfights when it was a notorious saloon.

After a copious breakfast at the local hangout, the Copper Kettle, we explored the streets in our airport courtesy car - a 1968 Cadillac. The Sidney Municipal Airport on the windswept prairie was a typical GA airport. Ed Nelson was either flight instructor or the air cargo operator, depending on the time of day and aircraft. His father taught farmers to fly in Nebraska's first airplane. Kelly, Ed's wife, kept a tidy airport office, scheduling flights, selling charts, gas, and coffee, as well as advising strangers.

At the edge of the airport grounds, an abandoned cemetery could have been Central Casting's Boot Hill. Ornate Victorian metal gates protected headstones of the pioneer settlers.

When we were flying again, Nebraska became Wyoming on the sectional, while below, isolated ranches hid at the end of tentative dirt roads. Unless you fly across America along the Mexican border, you will cross mountains somewhere. The year before, on our annual cross-country, we had "discovered" a spectacular low route following Interstate 90 through Montana. Snow-capped peaks rose off the course, while friendly airports bordered the interstate through the frontier. We decided to try the route again. With Maureen flying, I had a wonderful opportunity to examine each crag or cirque lake, searching for bear, goats, or a soaring eagle.

In the middle of the Rockies, crossing the pass into Bozeman, Tim wanted to open the canopy and take photographs of alpine snow fields. He claimed that he saw wildlife. However, with the canopy open, icy wind howled into the cockpit, and I imagined crashing. Not used to mountain flying, I was terrified at first.

Knowing that many flatland pilots dream of flying in the Rockies, we wanted to prove that you could fly interstates and other arteries, land at a big airport such as Kalispell, and stay in an old log lodge amid the world-class scenery of Glacier National Park.

That night, snowy glacial peaks reflected in a fjord-like lake from a balcony in the Lake MacDonald Lodge, a nearly century-old log hotel. Dinner featured trout, piano music, and a crackling fire in the fireplace. In the morning, delicate wildflowers bloomed at the lake's edge as we boarded a bright- red, restored antique car to let someone else navigate the pass and twisting road up across snowfields to another antique hotel. The park operates a fleet of 40 of these 1936 White Company coaches, known as "Reds." There was also high tea in Canada, and a too-curious bear.

If you are anxious about overflying a remote area, you might choose to follow the highway, as I did, and view the Bob Marshall Wilderness off your wingtip. Three thousand feet agl provides majestic views and plenty of room in the valley for maneuvers. Hearing local flyers in a Piper Tri-Pacer, I radioed nervously about the Benchmark Airport airstrip ahead. It was reassuring to hear the John Wayne voice say, "Why, little lady, it's a piece of cake."

Pilots from either coast, and even Europe, fantasize about cowboy life on dude ranches. In Montana, you can try ranch life in many places, even fly in to ride. We flew southeast onto the plains by Augusta, and then west over a gravel highway. Just a few miles up the valley is a 6,000-by-100-foot runway manageable by any pilot. The state's Benchmark Airport offered a free campground, or the privately owned frontier Benchmark Wilderness Ranch. We chose the ranch, and that night slept soundly in a rustic 1928 log cabin with a brass bed and wood stove.

The rudiments of high-trail riding were easy with kindly horses that overlooked our novice mistakes. Dinner with cowboys and other guests featured breaded filets of rainbow trout caught earlier from the stream just outside. Recognizing greenhorns, our hosts invited us to a genuine rodeo. For 61 years, everyone has ridden into town for the Augusta Rodeo. It was the moment for local riders to show their stuff. Unfortunately a cold rain poured, creating a mud bath of ropers and cattle. Playing cowboy was great fun.

At the Horse Prairie Ranch, guest duties included riding herd on 1,000 mooing, meandering cattle and moonlight hayrides. This ranch offers overnight trips with chuck wagon and campfire events. If you have time, detour to Bannock, Montana's first capital, now a desiccated ghost town. People left when the mine failed.

Don't leave Montana without fueling at "Becks-U-Pump," a dreamlike but peopleless FBO in Helena. Maureen OKed clean restrooms, a comfortable sofa, and fresh food in the fridge. Self-service pumps offered $1.75 avgas. I-90 was our path again, over abandoned Butte mines, and then through twisting Idaho valleys to the wheat plains of Washington.

With Pacific tributaries in sight, our last destination was the annual EAA fly-in in Arlington, Washington. In the pattern, a frantic tower controller identified aircraft by color, acknowledging only on final and landing six at a time.

While I had heard about Oshkosh, I was amazed by the huge fly-in at Arlington. My head was awash with names and types, as Tim rattled off an antique from the 1930s or the latest homebuilt that seems to go forward while looking as if it's going backward. Was it a bigger thrill meeting stunt pilot Bob Hoover, or seeing my first instructor, Summer Martel, perform her aerobatic program while wringing out a Cessna Aerobat? Don't know.

This trip to remember occupied only two weeks but had included camping, dude ranches, antique hotels, world-class scenery, and many warm personal meetings. We spent less than $500 in fuel, and pitching a tent is free.