Cherry Ridge holds a special place in my heart. Not only is it the place where I took my first flying lesson (at the age of about 12), but it's where my dad used to take me to watch the airplanes come and go. The restaurant there is second to none for homestyle cooking. The atmosphere is like family and the view is unbelievable. It's accessible from the air and the ground (just off route 191) and does an excellent job of attracting locals and everyone else.
Yesterday being Labor Day, Pete had time off work. Now that Gigi's in full working order, I wanted to get her some exercise. Pete didn't want to drive to LDJ, so I flew solo from LDJ to BDR. It's always interesting flying 500' over the south shore of Brooklyn and Queens as the sun comes up. The beaches were empty at that time and I could see all the way to the Jones Beach monument. I scooted around the Farmingdale class D airspace and had to duck under a few clouds at 1000' that were hanging over the north shore of long island. I made it to BDR in about 40 minutes.
We had no desination in mind but wanted breakfast, so Pete proposed Cherry Ridge, PA. A call to flight service gave me the "VFR not Recommended" warning. That area had some low clouds. We decided to take a look and see if we could get there, otherwise we'd turn around and go to Stewart, or somewhere else. I'd never taken Gigi into a short strip before (N30 is only 2420' long), but I was confident that I was comfortable enough with her to give it a try.
While enroute Pete had the controls and was doing a lot of work jsut to get used to how Gigi flies. She's a more sensitive ont he controls than your average Cessna, so Pete took some time getting her trimmed up. I was, of course, watching for traffic and playing with the new engine monitor that we just had installed. We got to the Hudson River pretty quickly and I announced that we had 20 minutes left to go. It dawned on Pete how fast we were really going. We would fly across the entire state of New Jersey and into PA in just 20 minutes. The cloud cover at that point was broken but certainly becoming overcast.
About ten minutes away from Cherry Ridge there were few openings left in the clouds and Pete decided it was time to descend and try to see if we'd make it in. He chose the largest opening and formulated a descent and escape plan in case we couldn't see when we were down. The whole was nice and large, and we popped out underneath the clouds at about 700' AGL with great visibility. I got my bearings and realized we were over a river with a very familiar looking bridge to our left and a bend to our right.
It took me only seconds to realize where I was. The familiar looking bridge was the Roebling Bridge in the town of Lackawaxen, PA and the bend in the river was where I spent most summer days fishing as a kid. The only hole in the area large enough for our descent had been over my father's house in PA. I spotted it from the air as we zoomed away at 160 miles an hour.
The winds at N30 were calm that morning and my landing on Runway 18 was on target and on airspeed. We had plenty of runway to spare. As always the breakfast was incredible. The blueberry pancakes were mouthwatering!
For the flight back we found another hole (not over Dad's house this time) and climbed above the overcast into blue skies. I was getting a little uncomfortable as we got closer to BDR becasue the overcast wasn't breaking up even thought BDR was reporting clear skies. Sure enough about 15 miles from BDR the clouds broke apart underneath us and we descended for a nice landing.
Flight home was another 40 minutes over the, now packed, beaches of Long Island. I put Gigi away in record time and just made it home to wake up my little co-pilot from his afternoon nap. Now that's a great breakfast!
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