Waypoints: Roads less traveled

You’ll see the theme of GA travel throughout this month’s issue. The goal is to inspire pilots to fly more and to explore with their airplanes. In fact, the effort is just a small part of the overall strategy at AOPA to remind pilots about the joys of flying and provide examples of places to go.

Our airport directory online has been revamped to help you find all sorts of destinations. You can leave ratings, comments, and even photos about airports, FBOs, and other businesses on a particular airport. From the main search page (aopa.org/destinations) you can search for airports that offer camping or “restaurant on field,” for example. The “Explore Places to Fly” tab allows you to use a Google map function to locate golf courses, ski slopes, fishing spots, museums, lodging, amusement parks, and other activities near GA airports. The Advanced Search feature goes even further in helping you to find events and activities relative to airport locations.

In addition, every two weeks AOPA produces Travel Pilot, an email newsletter dedicated to GA flying destinations. Each free issue showcases several locations easily accessible by GA airplanes and links back to dozens more we’ve written about in recent years. Click on or hover over the Travel tab at the top of every page on our website and then the Travel Stories option to see examples.

Keep track of all your GA travels using the AOPA app and its Pilot Passport function. Check in at GA airports as you go, collect badges, and be eligible to win prizes for the different types of airports you visit.

Two plaques on my home office wall are constant reminders of a couple of memorable GA flights for me. They include small models of a 200-pound blue marlin and a 50-pound dorado I caught on two separate trips to Punta Pescadero in Baja California, Mexico, in the early 2000s. The fisherman’s point, as the name translates, includes a small inn next to a paved runway on the cliffs of the Sea of Cortez. On several occasions in that era, a group of aviators from the West Coast would pile into a wide variety of airplanes and trundle south over the stark peninsula to the inn for a few days of fishing and fun. I would rent a Mooney out of Van Nuys, California, for the journey. The first trip was my first time flying in Mexico, which turned out to be no big deal. Returning to the States was often the more challenging and frustrating experience—but created memories too, such as three of us prancing around inside the yellow box at San Diego’s Brown Field Municipal Airport awaiting the arrival of a Customs inspector while anxiously eying the restroom sign at the terminal after a four-hour flight up Baja.

I will never forget our flying safari in southern Africa. Two couples in two Cessna 182s hitting four lodges in three countries in a week and being mesmerized by the access to the animals. Lions, leopards, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, elephants, Cape buffalo, impalas, kudu, hyenas, and countless species of birds and other wildlife were close enough to fill our camera lenses day after day. It was a trip in a timeframe that would not have been possible via any other means of transportation.

I have other incredible memories of flying in places like New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Russia, Greece, Egypt, and beyond. But trips need not be to exotic places to be memorable. I have a vivid memory of my young daughter stopping in her tracks at a small airport in South Carolina where we had paused for fuel en route to Disney World. She looked up in wonder at a tall palm tree and asked, “What is that?” She’d not seen anything quite like that in Maryland.

Another memorable flight a few years earlier was from the Poconos area of Pennsylvania back to home base at Frederick, Maryland. It was a short flight after a weekend getaway for my wife and me, but I had spent an inordinate amount of time planning it because of the overwhelming sense of responsibility that I suddenly felt after my wife told me on that trip that she was pregnant with the daughter who a few years later would discover palm trees.

GA airplanes are not just time machines, they are memory makers. I hope these stories in this issue and on our website will inspire you to plan a few trips of your own this spring and summer. When you do, let us know how it goes. We’re inspired by your comments and successes.

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@tomhaines29