We’ve been talking about going to the beach for ages … though I can’t seem to make it more than a 1/2 hour in the plane before I have to be on the ground. And when I say *HAVE TO* I mean it. But we thought we’d try and Ron had all sorts of places he could land if worst came to worst.
I took the day off, had someone else fill in for me at the studio (how cool is that???) and we made a day of it. I took Joseph to school and we dropped the girls off at Hoppers House for the day. Haley, our regular babysitter was planning to pick up Joseph and the girls as we expected to return around 5pm (ish).
We finally left Sanford around 11:30am though we were supposed to leave by 10:30am… the nature of being a Bickers and of flight. 🙂
We took off and I felt mostly fine. But about 45 minutes into it, I HAD to get on the ground. Ron quickly landed in Martin County — at the Martin County Airport, which he noted he’d already landed at once before. So he knew where it was and how to land there. In any case, we were the only plane there (it’s a small airport) and once on the ground, I was incredibly shaky and had to just let the tears come. It irks me to no end that I can’t fly with Ron for more than a 1/2 hour (ish). I can run a business, have three children (more than one at once!), manage employees, do all this stuff … but the (*#&&%@ motions sickness is absolutely debilitating. It’s just absolutely the worst feeling.
After recuperating a bit, the Martin County Airport people lent us a car and we drove “to town” which included a Food Lion and a McDs. Food Lion, luckily had Dramamine. Not knowing how I was even going to get home, I succumbed and popped a pill. I figured it was going to make me drowsy, so we added some uh … lunch (McDs) before I loaded up with motion sickness medication.
I could feel the effects relatively quickly … as we ‘dined’ on cheeseburgers and fries. Oh the insult! 😉
Ok, so thinking it was actually going to work, we decided to proceed to the beach instead of turn around. Ron extended the plane to 7pm and we confirmed that Haley could stay longer into the evening. Phew! We’d just “wasted” an hour and a half of our trip due to me. 🙁
Figuring I’d sleep, we got back up into the air, headed toward First Flight (at Kitty Hawk on the outer banks).
But I didn’t sleep! And, actually, I felt wonderful! One Dramamine did the trick!
Now, of course, I forgot my camera, so I started to pull out my iPhone (with its fabulous 2.1Mpx camera!).
As we progressed to the beach, we passed Plymouth — and its huge paper plant.
We passed Edenton airport which, later on, will play a big role in our trip! And, we kept crossing the Albemarle sound out to the beach.
As we approached the outer banks, Ron had to fly “around” and do a ‘right pattern’ so that we could land at Kitty Hawk. It was really cool seeing the beach and houses and monument all come up onto us.
The runway is in the upper right of this photo.
This is my favorite shot … of the beach as we circled toward the airport. 🙂
This is the runway … through the plane’s propeller. You can see how fast the propeller was moving by how many instances of it the camera picked up! A split second shutter speed results in picking up the prop! 🙂
We landed and taxi’d to the “plane parking” and then tied it down. Since we flew to the beach, we were going to walk TO the beach, around the Wright Memorial.
It was a haul to walk, but it was nice. Ron and I, by ourselves, me not feeling one bit sick, sunny day, warm, windy breeze. I’ve been to the Wright Memorial once before and just barely remember it. But it was pretty cool! We walked around it, crossed a huge 6 lane road and down another 2-laner and there was public access to the beach. Up a flight of stairs to a nice gazebo and we see beach!
It was SOOOO nice! SOOOOO SOOOOO SOOOO nice!!
Ok, so we didn’t actually walk down to the beach … but we were there and that’s what counted!
We walked back to the museum and asked about food … everything was 1/2-1 mile away and us with no car … not good. So we went back to the AOPA Pilot’s lounge and looked up where to go. We decided, based on what was available and how much time we had to go back to Edenton. The Edenton airport was prepared to lend us a car to go in town!
So, up we went and flew to Edenton.
If you recall, Edenton is across the water. We flew back to it, across the water and “around” to land. We borrowed the airport’s car and with a hand written map provided by the FBO, we drove into Edenton. What an amazingly quaint, but awesome town! It’s bigger than Apex (downtown that is) and had some cute shops, a Peebles, and tons of boutiques. I could have spent a day there. 😉
We decided on The Waterman’s grill. Seafood for a trip to the beach, right?? Yeah! Also, I knew I needed to take another Dramamine, so we decided on a NICE dinner.
We had salad, shrimp, apple pie, and conversation! It was heavenly because there weren’t three kids yapping and pulling on me or needed to go potty half-way through the meal. 😉
Of course, stopping, driving out of the way and eating a nice dinner, pushed our time even longer and we knew we weren’t going to make it back by 7pm or even 8pm … so we both pulled out our cell phones — mine of which had been used countless times because, as you know, I can’t really put work away 😆 … and we had NO SERVICE. No service, ANYWHERE! We tried everywhere to no avail. Oh well.
On our way out the sun was setting so I tried to get a few pics … which aren’t exactly perfect since I couldn’t control my camera … but it’s nice.
Since I couldn’t call, I ended up texting Haley through my cell asking her to stay later and offering her double overtime to do it. 🙂 She ended up leaving about 9:45pm when we finally got home. Cell service was sporadic on the plane because it kept shifting towers and would die before my msg. got out, but it worked! Go iPhone!
We landed in Sanford at 9:15pm and got how 1/2 hour later. It was a LOOOOOOONG day of flying, but it was awesome! And now I know how to make it work for me!
Next stop? I want to go to Charleston, SC and the girls want to go to the beach with us. 🙂