As of September 2006, these are flights I have taken, and a bunch that I would like to take.

Taken

I haven’t written up enough of them. The first significant family trip was up to Fresno to get into Yosemite. We need to do that one again in the DiamondStar rather than in a thirty-year old Cherokee. The boys loved Yosemite (Nell was writing a lot of the time and saw less of the park), and there’s an airport that’s probably closer than the one we used.

Our real first family trip was up to Santa Barbara and I feel silly that we haven’t made it up there for lunch because it is meant to be one of the best airport lunch spots in Southern Califonia.

The first family trip in the DiamondStar was up to Monterey for the weekend and that was a stupendous adventure (complete with a night time diversion to a strange, un-towered airport that was mostly deserted, and a through-the-mist night time landing at Monterey’s airport after we thought that it was fogged in and we weren’t going to be able to land. I have neglected to write that trip up, which is nearly cirminal, but Nell has a lot of the details so I should be able to reconstruct it (I’ll add in the boring aviation stuff). It was so much fun that Rudy has mentioned a number of times that he would like to do it again. (He has also requested a diversion to Paso Robles because he loved the airport there.)

It’s a short flight, but it’s fun, so I’ve made it out to Catalina a bunch of times. The buffalo burgers get a little old, but the last time I went out (with Rudy, Adam and Sharalyn) we had a picnic off the end of the runway, looking out over the Pacific, and it was a wonderful spot to be.

Our friends Tom and Marcy are up in Sonoma Valley north of San Francisco Bay. There’s a cute little airport right near them called Shellville and we finally flew up for a weekend.

Looking Forward

Most of these I have already sent to Nell in email: musings about where I think we should be sailing through the air to next.

  • I really want to go back to Yosemite for a weekend. Something that is a lot more tolerable in a plane than a car.
  • Adam and I have landed at Big Bear and I’ve flown my parents up there. I would like to fly Nell and the boys up before the snow melts. It would be great to be able to go from the beach to the snow-covered peaks and back in a day, and to wander the powdered slopes for a quick picnic lunch. (There’s also a resort up there which looks nice and sits right on Big Bear Lake.)
  • I have ordered a book, a customs sticker, a checklist sheet and a few other things so that I am prepared to fly south of the border (I think I still need to get some fifty peso additional insurance rider). When I was in high school my whole family piled into a van for three weeks and rambled over the sandy Baja Peninsula, camping on the beaches. One of the best times was the encounter with whales in Guerro Negro Bay. I kayaked only a couple feet from one. I would like the boys to see them.
  • Our friends the Colliers had a great cross-country ski vacation at Monmouth Mountain. There’s a little airport up there, too. They reanted a little cabin and they were able to step out onto the cross-country ski trail right outside their door. It sounded great.