Trusting my engine

 Thursday, June 29

Dennis is determined to fly the perimeter of the U.S. on this flight, and that includes islands. We left Mike Baswell's strip and headed for DeFuniak Springs Airport (54J). It was another really hazy day, so Dennis and I both climbed both for heat relief and visibility. I was at 7000' and the air was wonderfully smooth. Unfortunately, the haze made for poor photography.

What I COULD see was lovely: green fields, forests, meandering creeks. And lots and lots of water.

Then we headed due south for the Gulf of Mexico coastline, turned east and flew the barrier island beaches. I flew @ 3000' to get St. Joseph Bay to the western tip of St. Joseph Peninsula and then @ 1000' down the beaches: St. Vincent Island, the a quick hop across the bay to St. George Island. Dennis stayed on the deck @ about 100'. The haze was a lot thinner on this leg, and we had a nice tailwind and smooth air. What a delight!

The houses were not only on stilts, they had long walkways out to the beach.

And I was impressed by the private, paved runway on one of the islands. Dennis told me that the owners have a strict "you're not welcome, do not land here" policy.

Dennis had planned our route to end at the eastern-most tip of Dog Island, but when I saw the amount of bay I'd have to fly over, I decided to skip Dog Island and head for the mainland from the eastern end of St. George Island. I climbed to 3000' to do the crossing, reminding myself that I cross the Columbia River frequently at 1800' and this crossing is only a mile wider than where I cross the Columbia. Still, I remembered Dennis' nonchalance about going down in the water: "It's warm water and there are so many boats around we'd get rescued quickly." Somehow that isn't comforting enough.

Then it was across salt marshes and swamp with trees, trees, trees to get to Perry-Foley Airport. (FPY) 

We landed and refueled at Perry-Foley. 

It was only 2:30 p.m. and it didn't make sense to stop for the day. So we decided to go on to Crystal River Airport (KCGC), with a touchdown at Cedar Key Airport (KCDK) since Dennis wanted me to have "bragging rights" for landing at Cedar Key. I don't know why a pilot would earn bragging rights for this airport: it's 2300' long. And doesn't have severe obstacles at either end. But as I looked down on the airstrip, it sure looked at lot shorter!  [Disclaimer: this is a photo from Google Images; I didn't take it.]

And of course, you have to fly over water to get there, and you can't do a runway overrun! But still, 2300' for us is a pretty long runway.

There's nothing at Cedar Key Airport: just the runway. We got out of our planes to walk around and take pictures.

A woman who lives in an apartment across the road shouted at us that if we wanted a ride to town, she'd be glad to take us. It was HOT and ice water or a cold soda sounded wonderful. Long story short: we are spending the night at the Beach Front Motel here at Cedar Key.

My room has a kitchenette, and when I got in the room, I turned on the air conditioner immediately. But it takes a while for the room to cool down, so I opened the freezer door and put my head in. It felt WONDERFUL!!!

Tomorrow we'll fly to Crystal River. Dennis is talking about swimming with manatees. It sounds intriguing.

Here's our track for today: