Fall Color Flight

It was an overcast day yesterday, with a slight chance of rain forecast, but the fall colors are changing and I'd promised my friend Annette a flight, so off we went.

Here's a quarry just off the airport. Getting deep fast, and if you look close, you can see the big trucks hauling rock out of there, Sunday nothwithstanding.

Hopping over the first ridge to the west, you can see the green changing to reds and oranges already.

Here's the Cacapon River, meandering north towards the Potomac.

And here's the Potomac as it cuts through the ridge in Maryland, on it's way down to the Chesapeake Bay 90 miles to the east.

And here's Interstate 68, heading east through the Sideling Hill Cut, just south of the Maryland/Pennsylvania line.

Downtown Hancock, MD, as we make a base turn, heading into the Potomac Airpark just across the river. It's at this point that Annette asks, "Uh, we're going to land?"
Yep. Airplanes do that sometimes.

Shot a nice touch-and-go for the practice, waving at a family that was using the airport for go-cart riding as we did, and then it was on down the river towards Harpers Ferry.

Along the way, we passed over Fort Frederick. A close look shows what appears to be one adult and one child inside at the gate. Looks like they've got the whole place to themselves. How cool is that?

Here's the Potomac River again, meandering lazily through Maryland farm country.

And here's a neat little dam on the river. I've overflown it several times and I need to find it and go see it on the ground sometime.

Here's the visitor center and Dunker Church at Antietam Battlefield.

And here's Burnside Bridge where it crosses Antietam Creek. I never tire of looking at it and pondering that day, September 17, 1862, when 500 Union troops died trying to take that bridge and cross the river.

And here's Harpers Ferry, where the Shenandoah comes in from the south. Washington DC is just sixty miles downriver from here.

Here's Annette flying the airplane, and hardly nervous at all.

Izak Walton gun club on Leetown Rd.

And we're home.

And the rains started fifteen minutes later. But our flight was practically perfect and a great way to spend a fall afternoon. Four states covered in less than two hours.