One thing you learn pretty quickly here in the country is that September and October mean one thing in small towns: Fall Festival. It appears that this is the time of year when all of the clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Knights of Columbus, fire fighters, etc. have a pancake breakfast, a chicken grill-out or some other type of fundraiser. It’s pretty awesome. For less than $10 you can get a great meal and support a good cause.
We’ve only made it to a few so far but one took the cake for best ever.
Out running errands one day I saw a flyer in the window of the local barbershop in town. It advertised a Fly-In / Drive-In that the Knights of Columbus was hosting at a nearby regional airport.
It boasted a pancake breakfast for $7.50 and a plane ride for $20! Are you kidding me? Where do I sign up????
Checking out the planes
So on said day, Melissa and I headed out to the Boscobel Airport. The weather was superb. There was a slight fall coolness in the air and the blue sky was filled here and there with little puffy clouds. About 10 or 15 minutes away and across the river, the airport was hopping by the time we got there. As we pulled in we got an idea of what kind of airport this was. Basically two short runways placed in an old farm field, with a few hangers for small planes.
They had 3 planes doing the rides and about 20 or 30 other planes pulled out onto the staging area. These small planes (I don’t know what type but Cessna is probably a good generic word to describe them) seated from 2 to 4 people. And when I say they ‘seated’ them I should actually say that they actually sardine canned them into the plane! This was definitely not First Class seating….. It was WAY better!
We had about 25 or 30 minutes before it would be our turn so we wandered around and looked at all of the planes and then went and had some breakfast (which was delicious).
When we finally made our way to the plane for our ride we got the big man himself: Ron the flight instructor. Probably in his 60’s, Ron was a low-key guy that joked with us and told a few stories as we went.
This was our plane!
Once we managed to jam ourselves in the little plane Ron shot onto the grass next to the runway – he was clearly not going to wait to taxi! As we rumbled across the grass to the end of the runway for take off I briefly wondered what I had gotten us into.
Once we were airborne it was awesome! The view, as you might imagine, from a 4 seat, single prop plane gently flying over the river and the bluffs on either side was unbelievable. The terrain takes on a whole different feel from above. The shadows that the clouds cast on the land were amazing to see from above.
The view of southwest Wisconsin
As we made our loop (going west and south following the river to Wauzeka) we chatted with Ron and marveled at the peacefulness of floating so high up. He was so comfortable up there that he stopped steering at one point and took his hand off of the controls. And surprisingly this only made me slightly nervous. On the way back to Boscobel, Ron made sure to point out the important attractions such as the prison and the junkyard. God bless him.
After a one handed landing back at the airport we were once again on terra firma.
All that and it wasn’t even 11:30 in the morning!
[There is video and additional pictures of this adventure HERE!]
My Year in the Country 