Fourth Day

On Saturday morning we hope to continue our coast-to-coast journey to the actual coast by landing in East Hampton and having dinner on the sand by the lapping waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Until then, this is the end of our epic journey. I took the boys to a fancy buffet breakfast at the Statler Inn. We ate eggs, bacon and fresh fruit overlooking the campus.

Gathering Nell we trooped out to take a small tour of the campus buildings that I spent most of my time in. Rand Hall, the architecture design studio, looks frighteningly the same as it did two decades ago when I last saw it. A lot of the rest of the campus is renovated, replaced, supplemented with brand new buildings. The very same single-pane windows protect the architecture students from the icy blasts off nearby Beebe Lake.

We walked to the I.M. Pei building on campus: The Johnson Art Museum. Great views of Lake Cayuga from the fifth floor. It’s a great building overall.

The boys were quite tired of yet another campus structure, so we headed back to the Inn, packed up and took the 11:30am shuttle to the airport. One last leg.

We packed up, fired up the engine and the weather information and took off. The clouds kept us lower for a while, but when we could we climbed to 5,500. The overcast at KLEB was 2,100 and that meant we were going to either need to duck under the layer before we got there, or we were going to need to make an instrument approach.

We did the latter. It was our only instrument approach of the entire trip. I didn’t do as good a job as I should have (I was high and fast and once I broke out I did a 360 to lose altitude. The controller had me sort of high for the initial approach, but I should have looked at the procedure turn more closely, since I was meant to descend during the turn. If it was more than a thin layer of cloud I guess I would have gone missed and just tried it again. I need to practice one of those back home.

It was great to be on the ground and know it was the end of our long push across the country. The FBO brought the rental car right out to the plane, so I was able to clean the plane out properly and dump stuff directly into the trunk.

Here in New Hampshire we have had three wonderful nights of relaxing dinners. Grilled steak, chicken, and a final night with lobster. Now we are planning our early morning departure to the Hamptons (just like last year!), and on Monday morning the boys and I will fly up to Canada. I have to research how to file for that flight because I believe it has changed since last year.