Project48USA: Oct 12, 2013, we are winding down from Project48USA, and do some sightseeing

Today is the first day after the termination of Project48USA.
we will fly around and enjoy the last days in Florida

Bartow has a small aviation museum on the filed, which used to be an Air Force basis during World War II. It has 4 runways, 2 parallel (09-27, and 2 others diagonaly positioned)

the FBO takes us to the airplane with the golf cart (the walk would have been 3 minutes...)

and soon we fly south west towards Everglades City

Housing on the canal,

and beaches with vacationers and week enders (it is saturday)

we fly along the coats over Naples FL

and over to the Everglades, to reach our lunch destination

On Final Runway 33 in Everglades (X01)

For those who worked with me at Tetra Pak, you may recall MIXCO in 2007, this is the city where we had the overnight in the tents, and where we did a bike ride on the blue bikes. These bikes ended up being offered to the City of Everglades who passed them along to the population of the City

The same goes for the tables which we used in our tented camp, they are to be seen around the village, at the school, in public places, in parks, etc.

Lunch is on the water front. The plan was to eat crab claws, today is Oct 12, but the season only starts .... Oct 15, so bad luck

Guess who of the 2 has the beer ???

....and guess who could not wait for the photo to be taken before biting into the Key Lime Pie ?

October 15 is the date, and no exceptions made !!!

Have you ever seen a golf cart with ventilators, or outdoor air conditioning devices?

We fly north along the west coast of Florida. Something strane happens here, either we fly low, or the buildings are very high !!

How do you like this small grass runway across the island? You land short, you need a seaplane, you land long, you learn to swim...

No buildings here to judge the elevation...

Venice FL

and the Tampa Bay bridge connecting Sarrasota to Tampa

Not every house is as nice as the beachfront properties we saw earlier

We land in Inverness, FL, just before sunset, to go watch a car race on an asphalt oval track

After the race, the organizers offered the public the possibility to try yourself to tour the track with their own "race cars". All you need is 100 USD, and probably a disclaimer from the organizers.

The moon is out, the ceiling is 6.000 ft, wind is calm, we walk back from the race track to the airport

and take off on runway 19 on Night VFR, back to Bartow, our base for the next few days

The views at night are spectacular

and (too) soon Runway 9 in Bartow comes up. Pilots know that to lighten the runway, you need to click 5 or 7 times on the Twoer frequency, and they come up, a wonderfull image