Michael McCafferty - USA Biplane Tour


Day Twenty
The most beautiful flying of all


Waited out an early morning fog at Mackinac Island and finally took off around noon. Flight Service was calling for clear skies if you look straight up, but very reduced visibility if you look straight ahead (the only thing that matters when you are flying a biplane down on the deck). Seems there's a lot of smoke in the air, all along our route down the west coast of Lake Huron to Saginaw and then Port Huron, on the Canadian border. At the last minute, we changed our minds, for no reason whatsoever, to go to Port Huron instead of Pontiac. Maybe it was because we wanted to get closer to the water, and closer to "out of Michigan" (we've been in Michigan for about two weeks now, and it's getting ridiculous).

So while we wait for the fog to lift, we are entertained by a group of pilots just coming in from Flint Michigan for a day of fun at Mackinac Island. A doctor and his wife, and a lawyer and his wife (she calls him a "monster", referring to his occupation). They just cannot believe that we would be telling the truth about coming from San Diego and crossing the Rocky Mountains (without oxygen!), and flying all the way to Mackinac Island, and then actually going to MAINE, then Florida and then back to California. They figure that is just impossible in these old planes and that we just gotta be lying. Showed them my California drivers license as proof and they got real quiet all of a sudden.

Took off in calm air and circled the island at low level, then headed out to the world famous Mackinac Straits Bridge (the longest suspension span in the world, five miles from end to end), then south along the west coast of Lake Huron. Here we did some of the best flying imaginable. Low over the water, perfectly calm air, hundreds of miles of pristine, natural coastline, dotted with vacation homes in the wilderness of Northern Michigan.

We would fly low over people out playing on their Jet Skis, and folks doing the barbecue thing in their back yards. Everyone waves and we wave back with our wings, and swoop even lower and do radical pullups to entertain them (and ourselves, of course).

Just when you think life can't get much better, we land at Port Huron on the US/Canadian border and find ourselves greeted by a whole bunch of people, as soon as we shut down the engines, they come out of a big hangar and walk en-masse out to our planes to greet us. They are members of the local EAA (Experimental Airplane Assn.) and they have just spent the day giving free rides to young people, just for the fun of it. We just missed the action, unfortunately, or we would have given some rides ourselves. They are all over our planes and love it. We swap lots of stories about these planes and the ones that they fly, and basically do the pilot-bonding thing. It's a ritual.

It is a most wonderful thing that happens when we touch down in these planes. Wherever we land, although we are complete strangers, we are greeted like long lost family. There is always a "courtesy car" which materializes so we can get into town to our motel. People are most helpful and help us push our planes into free hangars, or to at the tiedowns. They tell us the best places to eat, and sleep, and the local attractions. It seems that biplane pilots are a special breed, and that when you appear in one of these Waco YMF-5's, you are royalty.

The place we land is actually called St. Claire, next to Port Huron, and the guys as the airport are telling us to check into this really great hotel, but when I call, they are out of rooms. So one of the guys says to let him try, and when he calls he introduces himself as "Judge" Spillard, and reminds the manager that he performed the wedding that took place there this afternoon, and that he has a couple of "friends" who need two rooms. Well all of a sudden they find a couple of rooms for us. This is typical of the kind of treatment we get. Another fellow, Joe Kadet, tries to explain how to get to the hotel, but then finds it too difficult to explain, so he just says "Follow me", and makes it easy on all of us.

It's 7pm by the time we get to the rooms, and I am wasted after 4 hours of the world's best low level flying, so I order up a filet mignon and apple pie, jump in the shower and before I'm dry the food is here, and I wolf it down just the way a true carnivore/biplane pilot would. Normally, I'm a vegetarian, but when you fly like we did today, you gotta have MEAT (among other things).

The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same perfect weather as today. We intend to go across Canadian airspace directly to Niagara Falls. Nothing more specific than that. Maybe into a field called Rhinebeck, in New York state, where there is a grass field, with antique biplanes. Nothing is certain, and that's the way we like it.


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