Now this trip is what building this plane was all about! Brandi's birthday was this past weekend and I had planned a little surprise trip down to Jekyll Island. We arrived at the hangar around 9:30am Saturday morning and all the guys were already there busy cleaning things up. We pitched in and then I did an oil change on our bird. Bill generously loaned us a case of oil and Walt saved the day by having an oil filter we could use. We took off, got fuel at a nearby airport for $4.99/gal and off we went. There was some weather between ATL and Jekyll so we climbed up to 10,500 feet, which was high enough to get over it all. We did jump up to 13.5 briefly to dodge some taller clouds. The view was spectacular. I have always loved flying among the clouds. We cruised at 170 knots (195MPH) most of the way there. As we got closer we began to see some really pretty scenery as the river and wetland area permeated the area.
We landed and got all tied down and rented a 'Red Bug' (electric car similar to a golf cart) for the day. Rich, a very nice gentlemen at the FBO was helpful and friendly and chatted with us about a few things on the island and later about our plane. He was very complimentary and enthusiastic! So off we went to our campsite with our camping gear loaded up. We got our tent all setup in a quaint little area that had picturesque trees that I call Savannah Trees (because they have that mossy stuff hanging from them, no idea what its actually called). Then we had a delicious dinner at a place called Driftwood that had some really excellent southern cooking. Next, Brandi and I had a nice long walk on the beach (oh how cliche). The weather was perfect and the water was warm as we had our shoes off and were walking just along the edge. We drove around the island some more and found a huge soccer complex that was empty except a family of deer. We then went over to the Marina and 'window shopped' at all the nice boats and pretended like we had to pick one out to be ours. I liked ones that tended to have a nice big open area on the back for fishing/launching for scuba. Brandi was eyeballing a gorgeous sailboat. Next we toured the historic district, which had some impressive old plantation style homes of some big names from the past like J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller. We then walked along the fishing pier hopeful to see someone hauling in a big catch but it was pretty uneventful. It was starting to get dark and we were tired so we decided to head back to the tent. We had packed a cooler with a couple beers so we grabbed them and enjoyed them in the tent because we had to hide from the mosquitoes lol. The camping trip was a surprise to Brandi so in our last minute packing (30 minutes by the way, nice!) we neglected to bring a flashlight. We also only had a sleeping bag as padding to sleep on. Oops! Could have been a better evening but the next morning was gorgeous weather and scenery to cheer things back up.
We had a delicious breakfast at the golf course and then decided to head home to beat the weather. We had an amazing weekend and both agreed we want to go back again. After having put so much hard work into building our plane, it was such a reward to have a nice get away weekend like this. The biggest problem we have now is that there are so many great places to go visit!
