Driftless | Part 2, From Kalamazoo To Kickapoo

Whoosh!

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
01 Aug 2022	N21481	AZO (Kalamazoo, MI) - LSE (La Crosse, WI) - Y51 (Viroqua, WI)	4.7	2493.9

Six hundred feet off the surface of runway 17, we were engulfed by the dreary overcast hanging low over Kalamazoo. Because old habits can be stupidly ingrained, I keyed the mic and addressed my next missive to "Kalamazoo Departure" when prompted by Tower.

Without missing a beat, the departure controller identified himself as "Great Lakes Departure" and informed me that a revision to our route was "available". Already? With the press of a few buttons, HAL took over flying the Warrior and I responded with "ready to copy". Being faced with a reroute during an IMC climb was exactly the scenario that convinced me to invest in an autopilot.

My originally filed route was crafted to avoid flying over Lake Michigan and through Chicago's Class Bravo airspace. I was not shy about the Bravo, but was also not naïve enough to think that we would be cleared through it. Although my filed route provided some buffer outside the Bravo airspace, it was obviously not enough for ATC. Our new route described a crude approximation to an arc of even greater radius around the protective airspace surrounding the Windy City. As I processed the longer route, I realized that I would need to monitor fuel burn closely.

Upon a successful read back, Great Lakes handed us off to South Bend Approach while the Warrior swam upward through the gloom and her pilot labored to reprogram the navigation system.

Within a few minutes, we topped the layer and continued climbing to a 6,000 foot cruise altitude.

To the west stood a misty battlement of cumulus that gave visual evidence of the cold front depicted on that morning's prognostic chart. It was no “X”, but it surely marked the spot.

I originally planned a VFR departure from Kalamazoo on a course that rounded the south end of Lake Michigan and tracked northbound along the Chicago waterfront for some pictures. Once clear of the Chicago Bravo, we would have turned northwest to La Crosse, WI where a rental car awaited us in the commercial terminal. After taking possession of the car, I would have launched again for Viroqua Municipal with a plan to base the Warrior there for the duration of our stay in Wisconsin. Viroqua was much closer to the rental house than La Crosse and this mildly convoluted scheme was my attempt keep the airplane close without relying on Enterprise to drop a car at the rural airport. Kristy was tasked with driving the rental car from La Crosse to Viroqua to pick me up on the way to SurnameFest.

Clearly, the low weather scuttled my Chicago fly-by plans. It was not the first time. Whereas the VFR plan would have required three hours to fly from Kalamazoo to La Crosse, the new route passing southwest around Chicago presented an increased travel distance and prolonged our exposure to an unfavorable wind. Estimated flight time increased from three hours to four and we would arrive at La Crosse with only an hour of reserve fuel remaining in the tanks. A headwind stronger than forecast could endanger this plan and eat into critical reserve. I would be watching our travel time carefully.

Still smiling...mostly.

That's more like it. I think.

The front looms in the distance.

The clouds broke just long enough for us to spot Notre Dame. Though we were squinting from the brightness on top of the layer, the university below lay in shadow. There is probably an ironic joke somewhere in there about enlightenment, but it is a lazy one so I will refrain from making it.

Our transit through the front was a non-event, just a couple of mild bumps and a few moments of IMC that were insufficient to clean the windscreen.

Flat

On the back side of the front, the clouds dispersed and revealed the breathtakingly flat uniformity of northern Indiana.

At some point, the boring rectangular section lines of Indiana gave way to the boring rectangular section lines of Illinois. I have often bristled at the dismissive label of "fly-over country" applied to places between the coastal population centers, but I have to grudgingly admit that the phrase seemed applicable here.

Spotting this offset in longitudinal section lines, I wondered if the surveyors responsible had committed some kind of error. I was reminded of the kid in woodshop who tried sawing through a board from both ends and failed to line up the cuts.

"It’s a correction for convergence," explained Nate (a surveyor) when I showed him the picture. Darn. This image was far more amusing when I thought it represented a mistake.

This massive rail yard near Joliet, IL is part of the CenterPoint Intermodal Center. Fancy names aside, it was evident from a mile up that there were a lot of choo-choos down there.

An example of the quintessential small Midwestern town, isolated by cornfields while boasting railroad access and grain silos right in town.

Driftless Region

Sometime after crossing into Wisconsin, we saw the character of the landscape change significantly. Instead of rectangular section lines etched as a grid across a flat green surface, contour farming hinted at terrain of varied elevation.

This is how we knew that we had entered Wisconsin's Driftless Region.

Rather than aimless floatation, "drift" in this context describes leavings from glacial activity. If glaciers were litterbugs, drift would be the litter. Thus, "driftless" describes a region that was not bulldozed by glaciers in the last ice age. The rolling hills that we saw below were evidence of much older and varied terrain than what we saw in Indiana and Illinois.

In order to best manage the elevation changes, Wisconsin farmers had transformed the surface into an agrarian work of art. Stripes of different colors revealed alternating plantings of corn and soybeans.

I was utterly delighted by the crop art below and, while contour farming is prevalent in Pennsylvania as well, its character in Wisconsin seemed different in a way that I cannot quite describe with words.

While I gaped at the world rolling past, The Bear worked on logic puzzles.

Arrival in La Crosse

I did not embark on this journey aware of the existence of the Wisconsin River. But there it was hidden beneath the clouds. I was similarly unaware of the Kickapoo River, but we crossed it as well. We would drive across the Kickapoo many times in commuting between our rental house and Viroqua.

The Leeward private airport just 15 miles southeast of Viroqua makes a lot of public use airports appear inadequate.

On descent into La Crosse, we finally caught our first glimpse of the mighty Mississippi River. The last time I saw the Big Muddy from Warrior 481 was the day I flew her home from Oklahoma in 2004.

Outskirts of La Crosse, WI.

Photo by Kristy.

We joined a right base for runway 36 at the La Crosse Regional Airport (#242). The airport occupies the northern portion of French Island in the Mississippi River.

Photo by Kristy.

Photo by Kristy.

Final approach, runway 36 at KLSE. Photo by Kristy.

On short final for runway 36, the FBO (Colgan Air Services) was to the east (right of frame) and the commercial terminal was to the west (left of frame). Our goal was the general aviation ramp adjacent to the commercial terminal. As far as I could tell, there were no services there, but it was well positioned beside the rental car area.

Cliffs on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River valley. Photo by Kristy.

As we descended into the Mississippi River valley, I was astounded by the tall cliffs surrounding the river. This was not how I pictured the upper Midwest at all and it was a pleasant surprise.

Our GPS track from Kalamazoo to La Crosse with a flight time of 3 hours and 56 minutes.

Warrior 481 on the La Crosse general aviation ramp adjacent to the commercial terminal.

We unloaded all the baggage from Warrior 481 and exited the ramp through a turnstile. To my surprise, there was no code for re-entry, merely a phone number to call for assistance.

Due to the ongoing scarcity of cars, we were offered a Dodge minivan as a free upgrade. Reasoning that the extra seats might provide some ground transportation flexibility for other members of the family, we accepted the less-than-sexy vehicle.

With that, we loaded the luggage into the van and set off into town for lunch. Afterward, Kristy and The Bear dropped me off at the airport and began driving for Viroqua. I offered to let The Bear ride with me in the Warrior, but her assistance was needed in the van as navigator. What would be a forty minute drive for them would be a 15 minute flight for me.

I called the Airport Operations number to request access to my aircraft. 

To my surprise, Danny arrived in a firetruck. "We have a regional jet inbound and I have to be near the firetruck for those arrivals," he explained. Personally, I think he just wanted to drive around the airport in the firetruck. Who wouldn't?

Danny returning to the firetruck.

He also explained that the gate used to have a code for self-serve pilot reentry (like most places), but that it had been replaced by a padlock and a required call to Operations. He surmised that this was someone's idea of an improvement.

Probably from an MBA with zero knowledge of how airports actually work, I thought cynically. In doing so I broke the first rule of vacation: to shut-off "work brain".

Minutes later, I was climbing out over the Mississippi River en route to Viroqua Municipal.

La Crosse Regional Airport.

Proceeding to the southeast, I noted that the cliffs on the Wisconsin side of the river were just as impressive as those on the west bank. It clearly gave an impression that the Mississippi had carved out a massive valley relative to the size of the current riverbed.

Home Away from Home

Viroqua Municipal from the west.

Viroqua Municipal (#243) is an uncontrolled airport with 4000 feet of pavement (11-29) and 2424 feet of grass (02-20). Runway 20 has a significant upslope to it and terminates on a manmade elevated plateau. Fuel was an astounding $5.49/gal and quite possibly the least expensive in the state during a time of runaway fuel costs.

Viroqua Municipal from the east.

I tied down and covered Warrior 481 before pausing to inspect my temporary home base.

I liked the place immediately. The paved surfaces were immaculate, the landscaping tidily kept, and there were several well-maintained hangars. A perpetually unlocked door admitted visitors into a comfortable terminal building. Clearly, Viroqua Municipal was a great field to call home.

Within seconds of securing the Warrior, Kristy and The Bear arrived in our stodgy Dodge minivan. Perfect timing.

Photo by The Bear.

A Different Form of Deadheading

Entrance to the property.

The rental house was another thirty minutes southeast of Viroqua over large rolling hills and among the contoured fields that we so enjoyed from the air. We crossed the Kickapoo River along the way and occasionally encountered Amish folk trundling along the edge of the highway by horse and buggy. 

For quite possibly the first time in the history of SurnameFest, we arrived before everyone else. While temporarily locked out of the house due to a misprogrammed keypad, we explored the grounds. Our Verizon phones had zero service, meaning that cold calls were not a problem during this vacation.

Outfitted as a hunting lodge, there were more taxidermized animal trophies on the walls than most of us would have preferred. They definitely represented a different form of deadheading than experienced by typical airline crew members.

Contemplating this idyllic scene on such a beautiful day, it was hard to believe that we made an IFR departure from a dreary Kalamazoo that very morning. Our time machine had carried us through the clouds, across a front, and into a different time zone to deliver us someplace new.

Had a duplicate stick been available, this could have been the start of the world's most absurd sword fight. Then again, a SurnameFest without wackiness would be no SurnameFest at all.

Overall, the cabin seemed like it would be a nice place to spend the week and I looked forward to settling in. There was not much left to do on the afternoon of our arrival but relax and wait for everyone else to arrive. Naturally, getting there was part of the fun and the Warrior would get some additional time in the air over other upper Midwest states before our departure a week later.