Despite all our efforts to be airborne as soon as possible we were delayed due to a nice layer of frost covering three of our planes. The sun should have melted it off soon enough, but it was hiding behind a thin cloud layer. We were ready for liftoff at 7:45 but didn’t actually do so until 9:00. Our destination today was Redlands, California, just 40 miles east of L.A. Our track took us over Tucson, directly over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and the B-52 graveyard. Looking below us we could see quite a few A-10’s doing circuits.

The majority of this flight was over dry desert terrain so it was quite something to come up on Blythe, CA, our fuel stop, and see such an oasis of green dropped in the middle of the desert. We fueled up, switched pilots, and continued on. Approaching Palm Springs the visibility began to lower to 8-9 miles in haze. Flying through the Banning Pass the ceilings forced us down to 5500' which gave us a nice close up view of the hundreds of wind mills in the valley. Unfortunately we only caught fleeting glimpses of the 10-11,000’ peaks that were only a few miles on either side of us.

26 in Redlands was our runway of choice. This allowed us to experience first hand the illusions and looooong flare that accompany a downslope runway. We had a short tour of MAF’s hanger, more Cessna 206’s to look at, and then divided up into small groups and went to stay with an MAF family for the night. Once again a homecooked meal was a very welcome change from McDonalds.