Saturday flight. Now with more cool stuff on the ground!

Out to the airport this morning, both to check on my plane after the recent storms and to fly it a bit, 10kt winds be damned.

The first thing I found: My cowl plugs had fallen out and the birds had gotten into the engine compartment. The straw on the ground there is most of a big nest that they built among my cylinder heads.

Glad I checked and caught that, but I feel bad for the birds nonetheless.

Up and off. West over the first mountain ridge, and then south, down the valley to see what I can find. (Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

Hey, it's a shooting range. A big one. I'm over Peacemaker National Training Center.

They've got a three-gun class going on today, according to their website. Wish I'd known in advance--I might have been down there today instead of up here.

I made a couple of orbits for pics, but it was too turbulent to stay and play, so I bugged out back to the south some more.

My latest GPS upload added a new feature to the GPS that makes it flash the mountains on the screen along with the words "Caution: Terrain" over and over. It's actually kinda distracting and a bit unnecessary as I can see the mountain ridges just fine just by looking to my left or my right. This is West Virginia, after all.

What's this? A grass runway I didn't know about? Nothing on the charts about that. And wow--look at all the people there. Something's gone on.

Oh, you know what that is? It's the North-South Skirmish Association's camp, and they're having their Nationals this week-end. This is where all of the Civil War re-enactors come out to play, dressed in their period costumes and shooting everything from black powder revolvers and muskets to cannon and mortars.

A lot of them have trailers that they keep on site here all summer or even year-round so that they can come out and play "Johnny Reb" on any given week-end. And all of the campsites are broken down by state and unit of the re-enactors. My crazy cat neighbor has one down there somewhere.

And here's the firing line, and as you can see, there's lots of black powder being touched off down there right now.

Damn, I feel like Stuart at Gettysburg. Oh wait--he was off screwing around when he should have been scouting the Union forces, wasn't he? Pity that General Lee didn't have a couple of Cessna 172s available back then.

Here's the firing line, and beyond it, just over the creek, and to the left of the parking lot, is a bunch of little stores that sell pretty much any period or reproduction gear that a good Union or Confederate soldier could need.

Bye guys. Have fun. I hope that my Francis Gary Powers re-enactment wasn't too annoying. But you know what? Even if it was, I'm up here and you're down there and you can't touch this!

Yee-hah.

By now, I'm getting tired of getting beat like a rented mule by the convective currents tossing me around so I'm going to start heading back north again.

Here's a neat little neighborhood off some storm-swollen river.

Still flying. Note to self: Put airsick bags in the plane. I'm doing ok, but then again I'm flying it. Any passenger getting jumbled around like I am today would be understandably queasy, though. It's rough.

Hey look--a grass airstrip just across the road from the baseball field. I could land there, play ball and leave again, or at least I could if I had my mitt in the plane. Second note to self: pack baseball glove in plane.

Semi truck graveyard.

"Right turn, Clyde!" Swinging back to the east.

Over the last ridge and set up perfectly for a right downwind approach to Runway 26, Winds 320 at 10.

It was a bumpy day but fun, and another hour and a half goes in the logbook. Yay.