OK, so this is not going to stick
entirely with the main purpose of this blog, but if you have followed my
journey in past years, you know that the pilgrimage to Airventure is
a very important part of this entire airplane building process. Nowhere else on
the planet will you get the much needed shot in the arm to help keep you
motivated and moving toward your goal of building and flying your own airplane
than at Airventure.
This year I decided to start posting what I hope to be a
daily journal of this trip to give others an idea of what the ground travel
side of this adventure is like. One of the “perks” I get as an EAA Chapter
newsletter editor is that I am able to obtain media pass privileges that allow
me to obtain a weekly pass to the Airventure grounds free of charge, as long as
I fulfill my obligatory “media” duties by reporting Airventure activities back
to the Chapter. This I decided t do that by posting to this blog as much as
possible to capture all the interesting things going on.
THE JOURNEY
I have been taking my trailer up to Camp Scholler in Oshkosh
since 2009, when I attended my very first Airventure. Not only does Airventure
become the world’s largest gathering of airplanes for one week, but t also
becomes the world’s largest campground for one week. It essentially becomes an
entirely new city. There are tents and trailers and RV’s as far as the eye can
see, and beyond.
Since my first trip in 2009, I have been traveling for 2
days to get there, stay the full week, and then I take two more days to travel
back. The journey takes about 2,050 miles round trip. I break it up into two
500 mile segments, because I have found that I can only take about 8 hours of
driving with the trailer on the back until I am rather fatigued. I always leave
on the Thursday prior to the start of the event, which is always on the Monday
of the last week of July each year.
I left and arrived early on the first trip because I had no
idea what to expect for the first time, and I wanted to make sure I had enough
time to allow for “issues” or delays. I have been doing it the same way ever
since, and it has worked out well, so I have no reason to change the way that I
do this. So Thursday, 7-19-18, I set out once again on my annual trek.
I had managed to check all the major systems on the trailer
prior to leaving, but I had no time to organize and pack things correctly, since
I had been racing to get new tires put
on and the hitch realigned the week prior to my departure. These were safety
items that had to be done, as two of the tires on the trailer were not in good
shape, and if the rig is not level, you put too much stress on one axel or the
other and this is not god for the trailer or the truck.
I was leaving behind
record heat levels in Denver, and heading toward a rather disorganized
monsoonal flow that had started up near Minneapolis. It was very strange and
very abnormal to be cooling off as I headed further east toward Omaha, NE, my
typical halfway stopping point for the day one part of the trip. The rig was
handling just fine with no issues. Over the past few years I have found that I
don’t like much of anything at all about Omaha – never have, even during my
college travel days up to UND. So I have
been driving for about an extra hour to Avoca Iowa to get out of the valley and
presumably away from some of the heat, as well as the roads.
For the record, Omaha has the worst road conditions in the
entire USA, without question. My entire rig was just about shaken apart for the
second year in a row. Never have I seen such horrible road infrastructure. It
was so bad this year that I am now contemplating a new route – to stay away
from Omaha entirely. Anyway, the rig seems to have survived, but things in the
trailer were most certainly going airborne at times. Avoca also has a newer
Motel 6 that was just finished a few years ago. It does not smell entirely like
cigarette smoke yet, so I like to stay there for my overnight to take advantage
of the AC.
The next morning I began my travels listening to the radio,
and much to my surprise, the day before there were 3 major tornadoes in the Des
Moines area, which was my next destination from Avoca, only 93 miles away. They
caused major damage but no fatalities. This sent shivers up my spine because I
had no idea this had happened, and I realized that had my travel plans been
just one day off, I could have found myself in the middle of that mess.
One thing I have learned over the years – Iowa has some very
violent thunderstorms. Monsoonal activity certainly does not help the
situation. Luckily for me, I managed to avoid the situation, and just had low
clouds, high winds, and some rain showers to contend with, but no tornadoes
thank god!
From Des Moines on I-80 I go toward Cedar Rapids on I-380
until I get to the Highway 151 interchange, which is the diagonal highway that
pretty much makes a straight shot at that point all the way to Oshkosh. I
arrived at KOSH on Friday, 7-20-18, at about 5:00 pm Central time (oh yeah, you
lose an hour from Denver to Oshkosh, somewhere near Kearney Nebraska.) The campground has started adding more
electric and hookup sites to the area that I have fond I like to camp at during
the event, so the only way for me to stay in that area is to cough of the extra
money for a hookup site – it’s 65.00 per day vs. 27.00 per day for a dry or
generator camp site.
So I backed into my expensive patch of grass and set up home
for the next week. I only had about enough energy left to go into town for some
dinner, and they I came back and shoved everything out of the way on my new bed
so I could have a place to sleep. Turned
on my new air conditioner and finally had a nice night’s sleep for a change.
IN the next post I will have some much more interesting
stuff about pelicans and airplanes and EAA radio, and rain, rain, and more
rain……. It’s not quite like Sloshkosh 2010 out here yet, but it ain’t very dry
either. I am glad I got here when I did.
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