Last fall, after I got over the worst of the morning sickness, and before I got put on bedrest-- Husband and I flew like mad to try and finish visiting all 66 airports, the 4 requisite museums, and safety seminar and flyin. We almost made it. We had two airports to go-- plus Dulles, National, and the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico. We knocked off the museum on Thursday-- we loaded up the twins and took a field trip. Then, last Friday, my Dad, the awesome Grampy that he is, offered to babysit the twins so we could go flying (Husband had taken the week off).
It was great to be back in the air together. Though a little warm, it was a pretty good flying day for summer. Miracle of miracles, we even got a Bravo clearance on the way out. We don't usually get cleared into that airspace even when we fly IFR! Husband used the flirst stop at Essex to practice his short field landing as we'd need that later on for the landing at Hummel. The new airport at Essex is beautiful-- very nice and clean. Then we flew the short 25 miles over to Hummel. Good thing he'd practiced as this was a tricky landing given how lihttle we've both flown this year. 2200' runway-- right on the water. Thankfully, though the winds were squirrelly, they were light. We landed, fueled, and taxied across the grass to park next to the Pilot House Inn for lunch. Lunch was good-- much better tasting than it looked. Then we hurried on back toward home.
Flying back across Virginia, we had perfect ending for our quest: the controller offered us the East-side Transition past Dulles-- and for a second time that day, we were cleared into IAD's class Bravo airspace! The controller routed us right across the approach end of the active runways, and left us on a perfect 45 entry for Runway 17 into JYO. Very cool. On Sunday, we drove to DCA and IAD and collected the final two stamps. All that's left is to put them in the mail to Richmond!
