This morning, before we continued our trek to the east, Art gave a ride to Steve, the young airport manager at Maxson airport (Thousand Islands, NY), but for some strange reason, he didn't want to fly under the bridge across the St. Lawrence river. Art sure wanted to! I stayed on the ground until they returned, then we refueled and headed back to the river and followed it northeast to the Canadian border. From the air we saw a couple of the famous "locks" which raise and lower the huge ocean-going ore ships on their way between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes. It was during this leg that we heard our first French language transmissions on the radio, an indication that we were very close to Montreal airspace. At the Canadian border we turned right, and followed the dotted line for two hours, keeping the Adirondack Mountains on our right, and landed at Newport, VT to refuel and have lunch.
Newport VT is one of those unusual little airports that you happen across every once in a while. There was absolutely nobody home. We called on the radio several times before we landed and no response. We landed after circling the airport to check the wind sock, and when we pulled up to the office, the door was open, but no sign of life. After about 15 minutes an old fellow named Cecil appears out of nowhere, but he doesn't work there. Anymore. He used to run the place for about 17 years, but that was a long time ago. Nowadays he just lives nearby, and saw us circle and land, so he came out to check out the biplanes. He says that the manager usually just leaves the place unattended, and has no idea when the guy will come back.
Half an hour later, a plane lands (a Mooney), and sure enough, it's the manager, and he can sell us some gas. But no courtesy car, and he needs cash for the gas, because they just don't sell enough gas to fool around with credit cards. It's not hard to see why he doesn't sell much gas..... he's not there to sell it!
Cecil drives us into town, just because he like to talk about planes, and he shows us a couple of pictures of two neat old planes he built from scratch. We have a great lunch on the open-air porch of a restaurant at the edge of a very picturesque lake, and take a cab back to the airport. This was the first taxi we had to use so far in our trip! When we get back to the planes, there is a crowd of admirers around them. I guess the word got around this small town pretty quick. We chatted with the locals enough to be polite, and then flew off .
The air is absolutely clear, with widely scattered cumulus, and visibility far greater than it has been for the last several days. The flight over the St. Lawrence River was smooth, but as soon as we turned inland the turbulence picked up considerably. I climbed up to 6500 feet to get to the smoother air above the scattered cumulus, but it started getting too cold, so I dropped back down on the deck and the ride got better at tree top level.
The geography is stunningly beautiful. Lakes and mountains everywhere. All I can think of is that this is the perfect place for a seaplane. I have my seaplane rating, but I haven't used it since I got it two years ago. I'm thinking that this is the place to go when it gets too hot at Mikie's Fun House in the desert in the summer.
We fly out of Vermont, over New Hampshire, and into Maine (wow! 4 states in one day!) and it is all looking the same. Lakes everywhere, mountains which are more like hills, huge stretches of tall hardwood trees, and hardly any signs of human beings. Pristine.
We land at Greenville, Maine, at the lower end of Moosehead Lake. This airport is the home of one of the most extraordinary airplanes ever put together. It's a DC-3 on FLOATS! And not just floats, but amphibious floats. The word is that this is the only one in existence. As soon as I land, I taxi my Waco directly over to it, and park the biplane under the huge wing of the DC-3. I jump out and take several pictures of two of my favorite planes next to each other. The Waco is completely dwarfed by the DC-3. I really want to fly that plane. Maybe someday.
When we land, it is after 5pm, everyone at the airport is gone, so Art calls a phone number he finds next to the pay phone, a hotel called the Greenville Inn. Now here's a place you DON'T want to stay. When he asks if the place is right in the center of town, the lady says yes, but she lies. They say they will send a car right out for us, but it takes at least 40 minutes. When we get there, we find that there are no phones in the rooms, and since we need phones, we need to go somewhere else. When we ask if there's a taxi in town to get us to the next hotel, we are told NO, and they refuse to take us there because "We have used up our free rides" and won't even take us the two miles away because they "Don't need our money". They even suggested that it was our fault for wasting their time to come pick us up at the airport if we needed rooms with phones. How could we know that? Anyway, we found ourselves walking the two miles, carrying our bags, and cursing these bonehead cretins for their bad manners and stupidity. We are recalling that people from Maine have a reputation for their lack of hospitality, and I'm thinking that it was a good idea that Maine is stuck off in the corner of the US where these buffoons won't breed with the rest of us.
Well I needed the exercise anyway, and the shower felt great after sweating with the bags uphill in the afternoon heat. And then the miracle happens. The owner of the new hotel just happened to see us flying above town as we circled the place before landing. Her dad was a pilot and he trained her to look up when planes flew overhead, and she just knew by the sound of our planes that we were flying something special. So when we checked in she was just overjoyed to have us and she lent us her car to go get dinner and tour the town, and she promised to pick us up in the morning and take us to the airport, and she wanted a closer look at our great planes, and she was sure that her young boys would really like them too. Well, maybe ALL Maine people aren't that bad.
The interesting place to eat in town is called the "Road Kill Cafe" with one of the more entertaining menus I've ever seen. Here's their most important bit of advice: Never assume it's a raisin. And here's some menu items: The Cheesy Weasel Burger, The Chicken That Didn't Make It Across The Road, Seizure Salad, an appetizer called Spare Parts (lips, knuckles, nuts and tails), Nightcrawlers (curly French fries), and Bye-Bye Bambi Burgers (served with what appears to be either a pickle or a very old tadpole).
The place was definitely different. One must have a strong stomach to dine here. The locals reminded me of the movie "Deliverance". Heavily tattooed mesomorph mouth-breathers who were talking about the fights they were in, or going to get in, while spilling their drinks and laughing just a little too hard about it all. I just wanted to gobble up my Nightcrawlers and get out of there fast.
Tomorrow we go take a look at the Atlantic Ocean. That'll be a treat.