I'm not given to the $100 hamburger. This euphemism for a flight designed to get the pilot and the airplane out of the house, into the air, and over to a nearby airport that features a restaurant of uncertain quality has never held me in its grasp. I'm more inclined to flights that take me somewhere for purposes other than nutrition.
I make no judgment about pilots who do make the trip for lunch, however. I enjoy a good meal at a good eatery as well as the next guy and any time I can find one at an airport, I go there preferentially. Although I usually arrive by surface transportation, those pilots who have flown in give me something interesting to look at while I enjoy good food.
About once a year, though, I break all my own rules and prejudices and find a way to give into the very human desire to fly someplace just to look around and see something new. During a two-week vacation in New Hampshire last summer, my wife and I took a few hours to enjoy just this type of outing.
I was talking about a suitable destination with Mac McClellan one August morning soon after Oshkosh. Since he lives in the Northeast and I live in Florida, I figured him to be a good guide for the New England $100 hamburger. When I suggested Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, he laughed at my naiveté. "Those places are mobbed in August. Sometimes there isn't any place to park. Why don't you try Rockland, Maine? They've got a transportation museum right there on the airport," he said.
Fair enough, I thought. KRKD was just 144 nautical miles away from our temporary airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire, it was neatly situated on the jagged coastline and we guessed that a lobster lunch could be found. I discovered two FBOs on the field in my Ac-U-Kwik and phoned them. Each had the same jet- A fuel price (45 cents cheaper than KLEB) and at one, Downeast Air, the phone was answered by an extremely helpful woman named Leslie. She promised a crew car and directions to a good lunch. Not the famous hamburger, but perhaps an equally expensive lobster.
The day was clear with a cold frontal passage and associated thunderstorms predicted for the late afternoon. I decided to go VFR, an unusual move for us in our Cheyenne, which is more efficient up high. I programmed our flight direct to GRUMP intersection, then direct to Rockland. We took off to the south, turned almost directly east, climbed to 13,500 feet and called Boston Center on 134.7. They immediately pointed out an Airbus at nine o'clock at 12,000. We turned slightly left at GRUMP and the Maine coast came into view. We easily spotted Portland, often voted one of the nicest cities in the country in which to live.
