For spring break this year we decided to fly out to Tucson and visit family. We started our adventure with a planned overnight in San Antonio, which I had been to before but the rest of the fam had not seen. We stopped for fuel in Leesville, Louisiana (L39) and chatted up a guy redoing avionics in a Bonanza. Nice folks and great fuel prices there. I remembered the river walk and Alamo as a charming little area and it was neat to revisit that and experience it with Brandi and Lucy. After a quick overnight stay in San Antonio we departed West, but unusually cold weather meant the icing level was impassible.
We stopped in Hondo, TX (KHDO) and met up with an RV10 friend. We checked out his RV at his hangar, went into town for lunch and ice cream, and enjoyed spending the day while we waited out weather.
We departed there to make it as far West as we could on account of the cold weather, which landed us in Fort Stockton (KFST) via a nice instrument approach through IMC. We made the most of our time in tiny little Fort Stockton by going to a play, stopping for a quick photo op at the giant road runner, and generally just lounging at the hotel while our eyes were glued to weather forecast. We launched out for Tucson for an uneventful journey the rest of the way.
In Tucson we enjoyed all the usual fun of family and desert life. My sister and I went on a nice long morning flight around the area and she got some stick time in and learned a few things about aviation as she has intermittently had interest in getting her pilot license and an airplane one day. We went to the Desert Museum, squeezed fresh OJ from Mom's orange trees, went to the driving range, played in the pool, badminton, and nice dinners and evenings with the fam. While at the Desert Museum we recreated a photo of Lucy and her cousin, Levi.
The visit went by all too fast, as usual, and on our travel home we rode a great tailwind the whole way and made it back home in one day, which is what we typically shoot for.
