Our Saturday night adventure was a flight to Blackhawk Airfield (87Y) in Cottage Grove, WI, just east of Madison.

We picked Blackhawk Airfield because there’s a restaurant – Oakstone Recreational – with a vegan burger option at the end of the runway. The restaurant met our two priorities – a vegan option, and close to the airport! We were actually able to walk there. I’ll get to that though.

I was excited when we got to our home airport around 4:00 and saw all the planes out on the ramp. It had been three weeks since we flew! Too long!

And it was a beautiful day to fly – windy, but clear blue skies out by us.

It felt so good to get off the ground, and get away from it all. And to see how much more lush the ground looks than the last time we flew!

After we’d been at cruising altitude for quite some time Steven asked if I wanted to fly, and use the rudder this time (he’s always done rudder before). Yes, please!

I was super focused on keeping the plane level without losing altitude – by comparing the nose to the horizon, looking at the wings, and checking the altimeter and vertical speed indicator. So focused that I forgot to look at the GPS and make sure we were still flying in a straight line. Ha. I only got us a little off and Steven was obviously watching and telling me to adjust, as well as telling me what to do with the rudder. Fun, fun! I always feel so official when we switch controls by saying “my controls,” “your controls,” and “my controls” again.

The flight there was just under 50 minutes. We were planning to cruise at 4,500′ on the way there but came down a bit because some clouds showed up, and we needed to lower our altitude anyway – the airport we were flying to sits under the Madison Class Charlie shelf, and we had to make sure to stay below 2,300′ MSL to go under it.

We didn’t have too hard of a time finding the airport – it was just south of a major highway and on the very eastern edge of town. However, the runway we were planning to land on, 4, was hidden in the trees,

and the approach to it was right over a neighborhood! We felt like we got super close to those houses when we came in to land! Can you imagine living there? Yikes!

The kicker though… when we looked this airport up it said that runway 4/22 was in poor conditions. We looked at google maps and were like, “yeah, that looks rough, we’ll keep that in mind.”

Y’all, that was a bumpy landing. And it was NOT Steven. Whoa. We get what it means when a runway says it’s in “poor” condition now. Steven even said the plane was “chattering” (the noise wheel was vibrating) from how crappy the runway was. I MEAN LOOK AT IT.

The whole airport seemed rundown. It made us wonder if anyone else ever flies there, so I looked it up and it averages between 0-2 takeoffs and landings most days of the year. So maybe the people in those houses don’t have the shit scared out of them by airplanes too often.

But the location can’t be beat – it was only a half mile walk to the restaurant.

We left the ramp we parked on, walked down the taxiway/road, and onto a grass path that lead right to the restaurant!

We had to walk on the end of runway 9/27 to get to the restaurant, which felt dangerous and naughty and like something we’d absolutely never do at another airport, but here? Not a problem.

When we got to the restaurant we saw people wearing fun outfits and crazy hats and we realized it was Kentucky Derby Day! And that it was going to be on in about 5 minutes – talk about timing!

That was definitely the first time I’ve ever watched the Derby. It was fun to watch in a group environment, even though I’m generally NOT a fan of horse racing.

Later more folks came in dressed up in fancy dresses and we realized it must have been prom night for some! We had some fun people watching.

We stretched out our time at dinner, on our walk back, and at the airport, to try to time our return flight so we’d get to our home airport an hour after sunset so Steven could do his three nighttime takeoffs and landings to be current for carrying passengers at night (he was already current until June 20th, but we were like “hey, we’re out late, let’s do this thing”).

We walked around, took a lot of selfies, and did a very thorough preflight.

The wind was completely calm (the wind direction determines which runway you use) so we took off on runway 9, which was in “fair” condition and much, much better than 4. And bonus – it pointed away from Madison. We had to be mindful of staying below 2,300′ on the way out too, and this made it a bit easier.

We got to see a gorgeous sunset at takeoff!

After we got out from under the Charlie shelf, we went up to 5,500′. The skies were clear except for some pretty wispy clouds.

The photos don’t do it justice. It was a beautiful night!

We still had a bit of time to kill so once we got over the practice area, Steven asked what maneuver I thought he should do. We settled on steep turns (cause they’re so fun and we weren’t in the mood for slow flight or stalls!).

He explained to me the trick he learned on how to do steep turns and keep the plane at the same altitude – aligning the horizon to the left rivets on the cowling and doing three big turns on the trim wheel once you get in place.

Is anyone still reading this? Ha ha.

I like to pay attention and learn these things since I still want to get my pilot’s license someday.

We got back to our airport and did 4 landings and 3 takeoffs in the dark. We were the only ones there, and the wind wasn’t too nuts, so it was a good night to practice!

We called it after 4 landings though, since we are old AF and it was past 9:00. Ha ha.