So when I last left off, we knew we were going to the fly-in, yay! But, there was a new problem to solve with the weight and balance of the plane.

When Steven did the weight and balance calculations for the trip, he determined we could leave with 25 gallons of fuel, which is plenty for the trip and under the maximum gross weight for the Cessna 172 we had reserved (N408ES). When he talked to the school that morning though, they said the plane had 53 gallons of fuel in it and there was no way to “defuel” it, because their fuel truck is stranded at their other location and the ramp is all torn up (they are currently in a temporary location at the airport while improvements are being made).

The other 172 (N378MA) also had 53 gallons of fuel in it, but can carry 100 lbs more weight. So we switched to that plane and they defueled a little bit using a little hand-held pump to get it down to its max gross weight. (We now know to request the tanks NOT be full when we make a reservation.)

So after that problem was solved, we did preflight, run-up, and took off at 11:22 am! Side note: from the outside perspective, it seems like pilots need to be able to solve problems on the fly (ba dum ching) like that, and that is something Steven completely excels at.

Another “problem” (sorta) – it was pretty cloudy. Steven is working on VFR (visual flying rules), not IFR (instrument flying rules, that comes later if he wants), which meant we needed to be able to see where we were flying, and not fly through any clouds. So that made things interesting.

Pine Dunes Forest Preserve from above

He didn’t want to fly below the cloud ceiling because it was pretty low (2500 ft?), darker, and had a lower fuel economy. So we started a climb not too long after takeoff, when the first layer of clouds were still scattered and a little easier to get above. Once up there, he had to stray a bit from the straight course to go around some big clouds. I could still see the ground through the broken clouds, until we were close to halfway through the trip and went completely above the clouds.

Flying through the clouds

We stayed up there until we got close to the Mississippi River (Wisconsin/Iowa border), then we looked for a cloud opening to get down through. We found one, and it wasn’t big enough to do a straight descent through, so we did spiral turn to go down through it, which was a lot of fun. My dad was watching us on Glympse and said he saw that and wondered what we were doing (okay, he joked around that “isn’t that what planes normally do before they crash?” and I told him “at least you’d know where to find us!”).

Back down through the clouds/view of the Mississippi River

After that we were below the lowest level of clouds again, and followed the Mississippi River up to the island. All that diverting around the clouds added quite a bit of time on to the trip. It was already estimated to be longer because of a headwind, but it ended up taking us almost 2 hours (driving there takes 4 hours).

I love to fly and am not upset about being in the plane longer, just thinking about how it costs a bit more. But it was a lot of fun – flying over places I visit around the house, climbing above the clouds, admiring the view of the Mississippi River, seeing some eagles flying right by the plane, seeing Guttenberg from above, all the chatting and catching up we did… it was great!

Guttenberg, Iowa

After we landed (1:24pm) we chatted with the guy who runs the fly-in, the headed over to the house on Esmann Island, had lunch, then got the water toys out.

Mother Nature (and bad luck?) were working against us that day. Steven and Josh went down with Dad to put the jet skis in, then they showed up going really slow at the house, and we noticed Steven was towing Josh with a rope. We went down to see what was going on and it started pouring rain. We all got soaked (we were in our swimsuits so whatever), then went back down and pulled a little bit of seaweed out and the jet ski worked fine.

Then we waited for Dad to show up with the boat and he never did, so I left on a golf cart and found him – he had been putting the boat in then took it out because of the rain. I looked at my weather app and it said the rain was done for a bit so we put it in, then it rained on him while he drove it to the house, then we went to the beach and it rained on and off most of the time we were there. Kind of horrible beach weather! Ugh! I felt bad that the weather was not nicer, for Josh. And it was already after the time of day the fly-in had been scheduled for (it was moved to Sunday) but I can see why they moved it. Anyway.

We hung out there a bit, then went back, got clean and warm, made dinner and hung out chatting way too late.  It was a fun night, but we could have done with a little less death talk from my mom ha ha ha. But really.