Adventures in the Mitten | Part 6, Tailwinds and Tornadoes

August 5, 2024: No Homecoming

For the past decade, I have written a column for the Williamson Flying Club newsletter about cool places to fly that I cleverly titled "Cool Places to Fly". Naturally, I wrote a piece for this column about the Kalamazoo Air Zoo, a world class aviation museum where I volunteered as a docent for five years before moving to New York. Given the distance (377 nautical miles or 2.8 hours Cherokee time), I never thought it was realistic to organize a club fly-out solely to the Air Zoo. However, considering that we were already in Michigan, returning home via Kalamazoo seemed like a wonderful opportunity to share one of my favorite aviation themed institutions with WFC members.

But the weather had other ideas.

Early that morning, my review of the weather suggested significant thunderstorm activity in the Rochester, NY area by the afternoon. I exchanged multiple text messages with Tom and our consensus was to skip Kalamazoo and proceed directly home from Traverse City that morning. The only silver lining in an otherwise gloomy weather outlook was that a significant tailwind would foster ground speeds as high as 150 knots to make the flight from Traverse City to Sodus via MARGN (near Port Huron, added to minimize water crossings) in a mere three hours.

Through the Mist

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
05 Aug 2024	N21481	TVC (Traverse City, MI) - SDC (Sodus, NY)	3.3	2881.8

We launched on IFR flight plans around 8:30 am from runway 36 at Cherry Capital Airport.

Grand Traverse Bay, East Arm.

Grand Traverse Bay, Old Mission Peninsula.

On initial climb, we had beautiful misty views of Grand Traverse Bay before entering the clouds. We remained in instrument conditions for over 2.5 hours.

Oblique morning lighting reflected through the mist from the surface of a river below.

Houghton Lake, MI.

Alyssa and I passed the time by talking about flying. She asked a lot of good questions and I had a few pertinent stories to share. The time passed quickly.

The clouds thinned just enough to spot the dual spans of the Bluewater Bridge linking Port Huron, MI and Sarnia, ON across the St Clair River. I have driven across this bridge many times in my life, but at this point, I believe that I have navigated the crossing by air even more.

A massive buildup beyond our windows coincided with ugly red and violet blotches on the uplinked radar display. As we passed it, the fierce thunderstorm continued to build over Buffalo, NY. Some time after we passed it, this storm spawned a tornado, which is rare for western New York state. By missing it, we certainly validated our early morning text message consensus to come straight home.

Sky diving operations over the Pine Hill Airport resulted in a massive deviation south of course between Buffalo and Rochester. Normally, a five mile deviation will suffice, but ATC sent us nearly twelve miles out of our way. I spent some time mentally replaying my interactions with Buffalo Approach that morning and trying to recall if I said something to irritate the controller. Nothing came to mind.

Overflying the Frederick Douglass / Greater Rochester International Airport (KROC).

ForeFlight ground track from Traverse City, MI to MARGN to Sodus, NY, including the skydiving deviation.

Just like that, we were back home after our odyssey to the Mitten. Further validation of our weather decision making came when I drove through a ferocious downpour on my way home from the airport. Kalamazoo was just not meant to be that day.

Another successful WFC fly-out completed. I think everyone was pleasantly surprised and impressed by the places we visited in Michigan. It is always wonderful to travel with people you can be weird around and, while Tom and Alicia are good enough friends that I knew this to be true for them, Alyssa was a bit of an unknown. Fortunately, she was not only great company in flight, but fit in well with the others. While I had hoped that additional WFC members would join in, I cannot escape the notion that our excellent trip may have partially resulted from traveling with a smaller group. I am still disappointed that I could not twist Kristy's arm into going.

In the end, we flew a total of 10.7 hours including 2.7 hours of IMC. We added two new airports for me and four for Tom, one of which included a beautiful grass runway. Tom and Alicia flew their first international crossing. We hiked and biked around Mackinac Island, explored the site of one of the earliest land engagements in the War of 1812, and learned firsthand of the dangers around trying to dress (or undress?) while riding a bike. (For the record, I am still unclear about what Mr. Head in My Shirt Bike Rider was trying to accomplish.) Tom and Alicia mastered the daunting tandem bicycle. We ventured through the mighty Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and the Empire Bluffs Trail. And finally, I enjoyed a nostalgic Oberon. Unfortunately, that Oberon in Traverse City was as close as we came to Kalamazoo. But even without the planned visit to the Air Zoo, we had a full -- and fulfilling -- journey to Michigan and I am grateful to have shared it with great travelling companions!