John's Flying Page

John's Flying Page - Places to Go

In the first year I got my Pilot's Licence, it seemed like we would fly somewhere almost every weekend. Sadly, that wears off after a while. For one thing, we've now been to just about everywhere interesting that makes a reasonable day trip. I've visited every public-use airport within 50 miles of Palo Alto, at least for a stop and taxi back, and a good many that are further. Well, there is just one exception - it would cost about $400 to do this at SFO. These days most of my flights in my own plane are the short hop to Livermore and back to fly the Pitts, and even that has diminished since I started flying the helicopter at Palo Alto.

While California has hundreds of airports, practicality says that you almost always need a car when you get there, and that greatly narrows down the choice of airports. Some small places have car rental, usually Enterprise, and will pick you up at the airport, but often they close from midday on Saturday until Monday morning. So mostly these days we fly to places that have commercial service and therefore have full-time car rental.

Here are some places that were particularly memorable for one reason or another.

A trip to the desert - Furnace Creek (L77) and Palm Springs (KPSP). Two great destinations, and my first truly long-distance flight.
Oceano (L52) - worth visiting - once. Fantastic fish and chips just around the corner from the airport. Miles-long beach, but walk on it at your peril as it is also a racetrack for all-terrain vehicles of various sizes and kinds. The action is at Pismo Beach, a two-mile walk away.
San Luis Obispo (SBP) - the airport for a really charming part of California. Car rental is easy, the coast at Pismo Beach or Morro Bay is only a short drive away, and the deserted interior is beautiful too - the Carizzo Plain is one of our favorite places to visit. Paso Robles (PRB) is also convenient and does have car rental at the FBO.
Boonville - a very quiet airport serving an even quieter town.
Columbia (O22) - the town, a very touristy gold-rush place, is an easy stroll from the airport, complete with stage coach, gold-panning experience and the rest - a great place to take visitors.
Santa Barbara - a $100 hamburger very much above average at the Beachside Cafe, a pleasant 15 minute walk from Mercury (or they'll take you there in their van), or you can rent a car and visit the town, or the Cold Spring Tavern on the road into the empty hills behind the coast.
Siskiyou (KSIY). I visited Siskiyou while building solo hours for the insurance in 5296S. It's absolutely in the middle of nowhere (5 miles from the nearest town) with not a soul in sight when I visited, though it does have self-service gas. It's in a beautiful setting in the plains north of Mt Shasta. It also has the NDB approach from hell, a major kink at the FAF (the NDB) and a truly dive-bomb descent, which I'd love to try some day under the hood.
I've been into LAX a couple of times, to visit a nearby customer. The FBO handling charge was very reasonable, $40 I think, and a taxi-back would have been free. The tower and Socal Approach have always been very helpful, and it's a real experience to taxi among 747s. I've visited quite a few of the other LA area airports too. Santa Monica is a lovely place for a weekend visit, with an excellent aviation-themed Japanese restaurant at The Hump right on the field. It was on the way there that I hit a rotor, crossing the mountains north of Camarillo, losing 2000 feet in about ten seconds as everything in the plane clung to the ceiling. That was quite an experience, not to be repeated if possible! I think I can honestly say that my aerobatic training saved my life that day.
One of our favorite spring-time trips is the Blossom Trail to the east of Fresno. It's an easy day trip but a classic case of choosing an airport for the car rental possibilities - there are a couple of airports on the trail itself but we've always gone to Fresno (FAT).
Round Valley is a beautiful place which is prety much impossible to visit other than by plane. Take a picnic - the town is only a mile away, but there's not much there. By good luck, there was a rodeo there when we visited - it was a bit of a hike, but a fantastic opportunity to see rural America at its finest.
Having a nice day with not much to do, I recently visited Quincy (2O1). The town is nice, although only Subway was open when I got there. But the airport and the approach are really something. You have to be at 8-9000 feet to get over the mountains, then drop down to the field at 3400' in a couple of miles. That's exciting enough, but then you discover that if you try to fly a normal pattern, the terrain gets seriously in the way. (Hint: so don't - fly a long straight-in from the east). I think that if you fly a nice gentle pattern with 30º banks, at 90 knots or so, you will actually hit the surrounding mountains (which won't be so gentle after all). Another place where aerobatic training comes in handy.
A few times I've had the chance to fly in England - altthough actual flying is the same, many things are different.
I've also flown in France a few times, at Biarritz (LFBZ) and Cannes (LFMD), in some relatively unusual types: a Robin (nice, and the first plane I flew with a stick instead of a yoke), a Diamond DA40 (which I really liked - I think if I was buying a new plane now, this would be the one), and once in a Piper Tomahawk (PA38) which I can say without hesitation is by a long way the nastiest thing I have ever flown - underpowered, heavy, poorly balanced, and of course lethal if you try to spin it, which I didn't.