Time to spare, go by air. How ironic that this year's journey to Gaston's White River Resort in Arkansas ended with a car ride.
By the way, today - June 6th 2008 - just so happens to be the tenth anniversary of my first flight.
This is my second year attending a fly-in gathering at Gaston's. Organized mostly on the Pilots of America message board, this event brings together pilots from all over the country. Last year I flew in with Kent in a Piper Archer. This year we brought the Cessna 182. This year we had a cabin booked for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights instead of just Friday-Saturday, so we were looking forward to having that extra time.
Well, we didn't make it out of Madison until something like 10:30 p.m. last night, the 5th and I knew this would be a crazy flight. There was an intense weather system causing a solid squall line of thunderstorms from Minnesota to Texas (west of our route). Ahead of that, winds aloft were out of the south and ridiculously strong. We would be able to stay out of the clouds and make the flight VFR, which was good... but we'd have a strong headwind and would need to keep an eye on those thunderstorms. If Kent hadn't rented a Garmin GPSMAP 496 with XM Satellite Weather, I don't think either of us would have attempted the trip. It might have been too difficult to keep track of the thunderstorms.
The Garmin GPS worked wonders. It had lots of useful weather data. If they wouldn't be so expensive, I'd own one.
We chugged along at a groundspeed of anything from 85 knots all the way down to 65 knots. (I'd say headwinds averaged about 50 knots.) Four and a half hours of this, and we had gotten seemingly nowhere. On a normal day we'd have made it to our destination in less than four hours. Instead, we had to divert to Jefferson City, MO. Four and a half hours were plenty for one night... it was 3:00 a.m. when we landed a gusty wind, and the thunderstorms were within an hour away. I happily called it quits. Hmm, I would have to check the logbook but I think this is the longest time I've ever sat in a small plane before stopping.
At least the ride was smooth most of the way, and we did have an entertaining light show off to the west. We heard an air traffic controller telling a pilot about a control tower being evacuated due to a tornado warning somewhere. We also heard pilots having to make unusually long diversions to get where they wanted to go. We even heard a controller tell a pilot frankly, "You don't want to go there." It was educational.
Luckily for Kent and me, someone from the message board knew we were coming and had offered to put us up for the night, even though he knew we'd be arriving really late. (Thanks Mark!) Of course by now we forfeited our first night in the cabin at Gaston's but were glad to have a roof over our heads.
We slept in quite late today and then set out for the last part of our trip. Mark and his wife, who we stayed with, would be driving the four-hour trip from Jefferson City. I planned to fly with Kent, but the threat of hot, turbulent air and thunderstorm-dodging didn't appeal to me. I let Kent go by himself and chose to ride in the car instead. I made some new friends as we talked about flying the whole time. It turned out Kent made it alright and his flight was good.
We reunited with friends and enjoyed food from the grill. The fog rose up over the river like it always does, and it crept over the approach end of the runway. There was a collective "ooooh" from the crowd when an airplane flared over that fog and we could all see its wingtip vortices.
Will Hawkins of
The Pilot's Flight PodLog among other ventures talked to us in the evening about his upcoming documentary film. He traveled to Gaston's from California in order to make a documentary about our event and the resort. We'll all be looking forward to seeing the results.
