We live so close to Indiana and had never flown there! We decided it was time to remedy that.

We picked Michigan City due to the type and location of the airport, and we saw some interesting restaurants and roasteries we could Uber to. Our friend Eric asked to fly with us so he came along too! Yay! We love taking guests.

We checked the prog chart the days leading up to the flight and did a briefing right before, and were expecting clear skies or a high cloud ceiling, but the clouds were low, low, low. It wasn’t a big deal – it was still MVFR (marginal visual flight rules) and we had to fly low to stay under ORD airspace anyway. But that will shortly explain the title of this blog!

It was an interesting day for radio comms. And no mistakes by us, actually! When we were holding short to depart on runway 5, the plane right behind us called tower and asked to take off on runway 32. But they were already right behind us… and lined up to take off on 5. They went back and forth a bit and tower actually cleared them to go back to 32?! So we called tower to ask if we were clear to takeoff on 5 then tower realized we were #1 in line and not that plane, and then that plane was like “nevermind we’ll take off on 5 afterall”?! Interesting experience.

Anyway!

We followed the lakefront down to Michigan City, staying 3 miles from the shore (optimal glide ratio for engine out).

It’s always neat to fly by the city!

And we flew by the Indiana Dunes!

As we got closer to Michigan City the clouds seemed to be getting lower. We were going to begin our descent into town to land and noticed the clouds were even lower over the city (in photo below) than on the lake and that we would have been flying right into them.

Since Steven doesn’t have an instrument rating to fly through clouds we turned around (seen in map below) and headed back to our planned diversion airport, Gary.

And that’s how we ended up in Gary, Indiana!

Gary/Chicago International Airport has a hella fancy fixed-base operator (FBO), like, whoa. One of the coolest I’ve ever been to! And the lady working there was so nice and helpful.

We borrowed the courtesy car, got coffees at IXXA in Hammond, and went to Bairstow Trailhead to walk. Anytime I’ve driven on I-90 through Indiana I’ve noticed this cool lake with a trail on it and realized we were RIGHT by that lake! I was so excited to see it in person. But we only had 10 minutes before we needed to head back (someone had the plane rented after us at 12:30), so it was a short walk, ha. Glad I know where it is now!

We got back and did flight planning in the FBO, did preflight, etc. etc. then called ground to request departure and it was one of the weirdest air traffic control (ATC) communications I’ve ever been part of. I had a long description of it written out, but I already made you read through one of those, so let’s keep this short. It seemed to be a new ATC who said our tail number wrong a few times (so we weren’t sure who he was talking to) and gave unclear directions. It wasn’t busy – we were the only other plane there – so it wasn’t a big deal at all. We took our time and asked for clarification to ensure we did what they wanted us to. Everyone has to start learning somewhere (says the girl who has never done radio comms!)!

We took off and followed a similar route to the way we came in, making sure to stay under the clouds, under the ORD Bravo Shelf, away from the MDW Charlie Shelf, and away from the temporary flight restriction (TFR) around Wrigley for the White Sox/Cubs game. Phew. There is a lot going on around Chicago airspace, even over the lake.

But it was a nice chill flight back! We had fun chatting and looking at all the boats.

Eric really enjoyed it and we’d love to take him up again! We just love sharing these adventures with our family and friends!