We had planned to do some flying over my birthday weekend last weekend, but the weather was awful. This week, the forecast for Thursday was good, Erica was off work, and I was able to take a vacation day, so we made plans to do something.
One quick trip we had been wanting to do was fly up to St. Louis and visit the zoo. After a little deliberation on our options, we decided to head up mid morning.
The trip up was uneventful with smooth air the whole way. We had a bit of a headwind at 5,500, causing our ground speed to only get up to about 90 knots. We were able to see downtown St. Louis from 45 miles out, and downtown tower approved us to head North and do a 360 across the river from the arch and let Erica take a few pictures.
when we got to the airport, the staff met us right at the airplane with our rental car. The surprise was that I had reserved an “economy” rental, but the car they brought me was a BMW convertible. Compact for sure, but not what we expected. I guess we got to live the jet set life on a prop budget!
we headed over to the zoo and spent about 3 hours enjoying the animals before we headed back over to the airport. We got everything squared away with the airplane, and were back in the air shortly after 5. Ground speeds on the way back were a lot better, around 102 knots. As we were headed back into Willow Springs, we discussed the deer that are always present near the runway. Our plan was to just expect to do a go-around, and scare them off. Sure enough, I counted 8 dear just to the East of the runway, so we did a low pass right over the top of them to scare them into the woods. By the time we came back around to land, they were already back in the grass, but not as close to the runway. They are really pretty, and fun to watch, but I wish they would find somewhere else to live.