Come fly with me....

Andy's first cross country in Cali was today. This was my first time with him piloting a Cessna (and for any parents and grandparents reading this... he still flies with a flight instructor till he earns his instrument rating...) Last time it was in a Piper and last time we were flying over downtown Dayton and Xenia OHIO!

We flew from the Aero Club at Edwards AFB to Catalina Island, to a full stop landing at Long Beach, to a high ILS approach while tracking the back localizer (aka he followed the runway but never touched down) at Palmdale Airport, then back to Edwards (where I saw where the shuttle landed, black streaks and all).

Here are the awesome pics I took today :)

 We flew over an Airbus A380, right around LAX...

Right over the USC Trojans Stadium...

 Our sweet lil ride... :) 

 "Due to obstructed visibility, use of Unicom frequency is required"

 View from the left side of the plane, toward the runway...

 A shot of our shadow on the ground...

 Us again...

 Views of Catalina Island

Road carved into the side of the mountain...

 View of Avalon

 Ferry heading to Avalon

 Boats

Andy's reflection...

View of runway we landed on in Long Beach 

Look at all that red algae...

This shot reminded me of  a computer motherboard...

You can kinda see the roads carved along the tops of the mountains...

 We flew over Disneyland... :)
In the picture above, the wheel fairing is right next to the Mickey head ferris wheel at California Adventure 

Actually our overall trip was cheaper (and considerably less time) than if we had driven down and taken the ferry to Santa Catalina Island... Andy got three lessons in over 3 1/2 hrs and we were able to see things all over Southern California from a different perspective. So cool... 

"A mile of road will take you nowhere. A mile of runway will take you anywhere... "