09/21/2022 –
While there isn’t a lot that can be said about this year’s Rough River Fly-In that hasn’t been said before. It was a blast as always. This year my parents drove up from Indiana to spend a week with Ella while we flew down to Rough River. We wanted to go down early (on Wednesday), which would have been too much of a disruption in Ella’s school year. Now a Junior in high school, with a few AP classes, it was not a good time for her to be absent for a week. My parents came up on the Monday, and we spent some time visiting with them.
On Wednesday we departed about 9:45am for Rough River, and enjoyed a nice 40kt tail wind for the first half of the flight. Arriving just after 1pm, we found we were the first ones there. We took time to enjoy the park while it was quiet. The ramp didn’t stay empty for too long though. By the next morning a few others had arrived, and by the Thursday evening it was definitely looking like a fly in.
Jake had brought his electric scooter which made running back to the cabin from the ramp for drinks a relatively easy task. We made note to do scooter shopping before next year’s event. Friday evening was our usual pizza party at the cabin. There is a great pizza place nearby that delivers (Little Dave’s Pizza). Add in great friends and good beer, and it really makes for perfect evening.
Saturday there was a 5 ship formation flyover that included a Vari-Viggen, Burt Rutan’s first design, along with more friends and beer.
Sadly, Sunday always arrives sooner than I want it to, even when we come out a couple days early. Sunday was also the day we had to pay for the great tail winds we got on the way down. We now had 40Kt head winds, and it was apparent we weren’t going to make it home with a comfortable fuel margin, so we elected to stop at Quad Cities (Iowa/Illinois border) for fuel… as did a couple others. 🙂 Aside from the headwinds, the return trip was uneventful, with Otto doing the majority of the flying. Till next year Rough River!
