The Road to Oshkosh

In case you haven't heard, Ted and I will be at Oshkosh this year for some first-hand reporting on this year's aviation happenings. I left a week early to teach glider flying at a CAP flight academy in Minnesota. I flew up yesterday from Milton, FL (2R4) to Mankato, MN (KMKT). It was a very fun trip that involved about 10.5 hours of flying. I managed to get a few good pictures that I figured might be worth sharing, so I'm going to try to make them into a bit of a photo journal. Click on the pictures for larger versions. Let me know if you like what you see and I'll do the same for the trip home too.

It's traveling like this that makes me remember why general aviation is so great!

I had to fill up before leaving Milton. It was a beautiful day to fly across the country.

I flew over Columbus Air Force Base on my first leg. If it hadn't been Saturday, I would have never gone anywhere near here...hundreds of baby AF pilots all getting yelled at by instructors...no way! Good thing AF pilots don't work weekends at home.

Jackson, TN, has a nice FBO and and a shop that's well-known for C-210 mods.

Quincy, IL, also has a nice FBO and 3 great runways to go with it. It also has some interesting aircraft on the ramp. My plane saw these guys and made me stop to take a picture. It said, "I want to be one of these when I grow up." How could I say no to that?

I was looking over my chart and noticed an uncommon, but familiar town name. I thought, "I didn't realize there are two places named Nauvoo." Then I realized I was over Illinois and it was the one I already knew about. If you don't know anything about Nauvoo this pic probably isn't exciting. If you do, I hope you like the shot.

The last shot I got on my way into Mankao is just some indescribable beauty. If nothing else, scenes like this making flying all worth it.