Pella Tulip Fesitval
While the local Kansas City RV contingent was gearing up to head south to attend the Rebels Bluff RV Fly-in, Sandi and I were struggling to get to Pella, IA for the 71st Annual Pella Tulip Time festival. Weather wasn't cooperating on Friday. We attempted a 7:00pm departure but picked up some rain and it didn't look very good ahead, despite what computer said. So we went back and started to drive up instead of flying. I made a quick call to Wichita FSS and discovered the forecast was supposed to be better in the morning. Let's see.. 5 hour drive or 1.5 hour flight in the morning?? Sleep in a hotel bed or stay in our own bed?? Hmm... so we headed home for the night.
5:00am Saturday morning came early and dark. A quick call to FSS again just to make sure the weather held up during the night revealed an overcast layer at 6500 until we got north of KC and then clear thereafter... so off we go. Departed in the dark and watched a beautiful sunrise over Missouri. The ride at 5500 was smooth but we had a headwind so groundspeed was around 133kts. 20 miles out we cancelled our flight following and began our descent into KPEA. The traffic pattern was getting full... a couple of Cessna's, a Minimax and a hot-air ballon off the departure end of the runway. By the time we crossed over mid-field we were by ourselves in the pattern. A nice landing and we were guided to a parking spot in the grassy area that was beginning to fill up with planes. The linemen handed me a free breakfast card and we met Sandi's parents walking across the tarmac. They were having a big pancake breakfast at the airport as part of the festival, so we stuck around and ate breakfast. Sandi's dad, Chuck, and I went wandering looking at airplanes. The FBO had a Cirrus SR20 and an SR22 out for display. We looked at a Challenger ultralight and a couple of Minimax's. An RV-6 taxied up and parked, so I chatted with him a bit. Wives were getting restless, so we headed to the hotel and then off to the Tulip Festival.
Early morning sunrise departure.
Fog over the lake.
Approach into Pella
Lake shot while on final approach.
(This is the same lake you'll see further down during our departure from Pella.)
This festival is big doins'. 100,000+ people during the 3-day event. We spent the morning in the Pella Historical Village which has a full-scale 1850's style Dutch grain mill. (They actually grind wheat for flour that the local Dutch bakeries use.) Of course being who I am, I'm asking all sorts of 'engineering' style questions of one of the hosts. He asked if I was an engineer and said I wasn't a typical tourist given the types of questions I was asking... hmm... :-) The village has a blacksmith workshop, pottery shop, bakery, and a Werkplaats. The Werkplaats is where wooden shoes are made... by hand and machine. Toured the childhood home of Wyatt Earp.
Us w/ her parents.
Unfurling the sails.
Sweetie in the park.
From there we headed to the West Market Park so the ladies could do some shopping. It's a city park with all sorts of vendors hocking their wares.... not much guy stuff. Sandi and her mom bought a few things and then we caught a golf-cart ride back to the sqaure where we had lunch at the Windmill Cafe. At 1:30 we headed to the grandstand to watch the festivies begin. They go through a bunch of pomp-n-circumstance introducing the Tulip Queen and her court. Then they gear up for the parade by scrubbing the street. Kinda of a neat event. Then the parade starts which is pretty darn good for a small town.
Some goofball got roped into dancing with a Dutch lass.
After the parade we went on the hunt for Stroopwafels. These a a dutch cookie that Sandi brought home last year that I LOVE. 'Stroopwafels' (Dutch for "syrup waffle") are Dutch cookies made from two round waffle-like wafers with sweet syrup in the middle. They are about four inches in diameter. Stroopwafels are an old Dutch treat, invented in Gouda in the 18th century. The traditional way to eat them is with a cup of coffee or tea. Before it is eaten, the stroopwafel is placed on top of the hot cup in order to soften it up. We found the vendor that makes them but they got swamped and were only making to order. :-( I ordered a pack of 6... MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm... hot, fresh Stroopwafel!
Needing to see some guy things, we settled down on the east side of the square to watch the Tractor Rodeo. The local tractor club brought out their old JD's, Farmall's, Oliver, etc to show off and have fun. They did a tractor balancing act which was funny to watch. They had a egg-balancing event where they driver held an egg on a spoon in his mouth and drove the tractor over pieces of 4x4 blocks of wood. Some pretty nice tractors on display.
Tractor balancing
Egg balancing
Says it all!
We headed back to the hotel for the evening. There was a night-time parade scheduled but we were too worn out to head back. I ran out the airport to stick N523RV in a hangar for the night. Classic Aviation is the FBO on the field and had a hangar spot for me for $10. Back at the hotel, I looked at weather and called FSS. Not good news. Sunday weather wasn't looking good at all back in KC. Oh... and the Rebel's Bluff Fly-In got rained out I believe. I hear a few planes made it in but I'm sure not as many as Les was hoping for.
Tired, sore and sunburnt, I crawled into bed and crashed.
Sunday morning... gorgeous blue skies, no wind. Awesome. Hoped online only to find the forecast from the night before held true.... 500ft overcast and mist. TAF was calling for ceilings to get up to 2500ft around 4:00 in the afternoon for a short period but going back down after that. We ran into town for breakfast and the off to the airport. We decided we would fly as close to KC as possible and set down to see if the weather cleared enough we could get home. We chose Trenton, MO as our destination. When we flew over Trenton, we raised Columbia FSS to inquire about weather in the KC area. Not much improvement, IFR conditions. We pushed on from Trenton just a bit and stopped at Chillicothe, MO. The town seemed bigger and put us 15 miles closer. We landed to a deserted airport around 11:30am. Sunday hours are 1-5pm. An old cop car was parked out front which we took for a courtesy car. We waited until just before 1:00 when the local airport teenager came out to man the airport for the afternoon. Shortly after he arrived, a aviation local came in and showed me around a few of the hangars. He had built a couple of ultralights and the airport had a small EAA chapter as well.
With nothing to do but wait, we hoped in the car and headed into town to see what was around. Not much be we staked out a couple of hotels, bowling alley and movie theatre in case we had to overnight here. A stop at Walmart to grab a couple of puzzle books for Sandi and we headed back to the airport. I took a short siesta in the pilots lounge and Sandi played on the computer and did her puzzle books. At 3:00 I called the ASOS at New Century which is close to home. Sandi wanted the ceiling to be at least 2500 but might settle for 2300..... ASOS reported ceilings of 2500 with a scattered layer at 1900. I checked the METAR's at a couple of other local KC airports and saw similar observations but without the scattered layer. We packed up, had some fuel put in and headed home. We cruised at 3500 initially and just kept going lower as the clouds pushed us down. By the time we got into Ottawa, we were at 2500ft with clouds we could have stuck our hand up and touched.
A smooth touchdown at our home base, tucked her back in the hangar and called the local pizza joint for some carryout pizza.
Departing from Pella.
Fueling up in Chillicothe.
Under the overcast layer at 2500ft.
Final approach at home.
Flight time: 1.8 hours up and 1.9 hours back = 3.7 Total
5:00am Saturday morning came early and dark. A quick call to FSS again just to make sure the weather held up during the night revealed an overcast layer at 6500 until we got north of KC and then clear thereafter... so off we go. Departed in the dark and watched a beautiful sunrise over Missouri. The ride at 5500 was smooth but we had a headwind so groundspeed was around 133kts. 20 miles out we cancelled our flight following and began our descent into KPEA. The traffic pattern was getting full... a couple of Cessna's, a Minimax and a hot-air ballon off the departure end of the runway. By the time we crossed over mid-field we were by ourselves in the pattern. A nice landing and we were guided to a parking spot in the grassy area that was beginning to fill up with planes. The linemen handed me a free breakfast card and we met Sandi's parents walking across the tarmac. They were having a big pancake breakfast at the airport as part of the festival, so we stuck around and ate breakfast. Sandi's dad, Chuck, and I went wandering looking at airplanes. The FBO had a Cirrus SR20 and an SR22 out for display. We looked at a Challenger ultralight and a couple of Minimax's. An RV-6 taxied up and parked, so I chatted with him a bit. Wives were getting restless, so we headed to the hotel and then off to the Tulip Festival.
(This is the same lake you'll see further down during our departure from Pella.)
This festival is big doins'. 100,000+ people during the 3-day event. We spent the morning in the Pella Historical Village which has a full-scale 1850's style Dutch grain mill. (They actually grind wheat for flour that the local Dutch bakeries use.) Of course being who I am, I'm asking all sorts of 'engineering' style questions of one of the hosts. He asked if I was an engineer and said I wasn't a typical tourist given the types of questions I was asking... hmm... :-) The village has a blacksmith workshop, pottery shop, bakery, and a Werkplaats. The Werkplaats is where wooden shoes are made... by hand and machine. Toured the childhood home of Wyatt Earp.
From there we headed to the West Market Park so the ladies could do some shopping. It's a city park with all sorts of vendors hocking their wares.... not much guy stuff. Sandi and her mom bought a few things and then we caught a golf-cart ride back to the sqaure where we had lunch at the Windmill Cafe. At 1:30 we headed to the grandstand to watch the festivies begin. They go through a bunch of pomp-n-circumstance introducing the Tulip Queen and her court. Then they gear up for the parade by scrubbing the street. Kinda of a neat event. Then the parade starts which is pretty darn good for a small town.
After the parade we went on the hunt for Stroopwafels. These a a dutch cookie that Sandi brought home last year that I LOVE. 'Stroopwafels' (Dutch for "syrup waffle") are Dutch cookies made from two round waffle-like wafers with sweet syrup in the middle. They are about four inches in diameter. Stroopwafels are an old Dutch treat, invented in Gouda in the 18th century. The traditional way to eat them is with a cup of coffee or tea. Before it is eaten, the stroopwafel is placed on top of the hot cup in order to soften it up. We found the vendor that makes them but they got swamped and were only making to order. :-( I ordered a pack of 6... MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm... hot, fresh Stroopwafel!
Needing to see some guy things, we settled down on the east side of the square to watch the Tractor Rodeo. The local tractor club brought out their old JD's, Farmall's, Oliver, etc to show off and have fun. They did a tractor balancing act which was funny to watch. They had a egg-balancing event where they driver held an egg on a spoon in his mouth and drove the tractor over pieces of 4x4 blocks of wood. Some pretty nice tractors on display.
We headed back to the hotel for the evening. There was a night-time parade scheduled but we were too worn out to head back. I ran out the airport to stick N523RV in a hangar for the night. Classic Aviation is the FBO on the field and had a hangar spot for me for $10. Back at the hotel, I looked at weather and called FSS. Not good news. Sunday weather wasn't looking good at all back in KC. Oh... and the Rebel's Bluff Fly-In got rained out I believe. I hear a few planes made it in but I'm sure not as many as Les was hoping for.
Tired, sore and sunburnt, I crawled into bed and crashed.
Sunday morning... gorgeous blue skies, no wind. Awesome. Hoped online only to find the forecast from the night before held true.... 500ft overcast and mist. TAF was calling for ceilings to get up to 2500ft around 4:00 in the afternoon for a short period but going back down after that. We ran into town for breakfast and the off to the airport. We decided we would fly as close to KC as possible and set down to see if the weather cleared enough we could get home. We chose Trenton, MO as our destination. When we flew over Trenton, we raised Columbia FSS to inquire about weather in the KC area. Not much improvement, IFR conditions. We pushed on from Trenton just a bit and stopped at Chillicothe, MO. The town seemed bigger and put us 15 miles closer. We landed to a deserted airport around 11:30am. Sunday hours are 1-5pm. An old cop car was parked out front which we took for a courtesy car. We waited until just before 1:00 when the local airport teenager came out to man the airport for the afternoon. Shortly after he arrived, a aviation local came in and showed me around a few of the hangars. He had built a couple of ultralights and the airport had a small EAA chapter as well.
With nothing to do but wait, we hoped in the car and headed into town to see what was around. Not much be we staked out a couple of hotels, bowling alley and movie theatre in case we had to overnight here. A stop at Walmart to grab a couple of puzzle books for Sandi and we headed back to the airport. I took a short siesta in the pilots lounge and Sandi played on the computer and did her puzzle books. At 3:00 I called the ASOS at New Century which is close to home. Sandi wanted the ceiling to be at least 2500 but might settle for 2300..... ASOS reported ceilings of 2500 with a scattered layer at 1900. I checked the METAR's at a couple of other local KC airports and saw similar observations but without the scattered layer. We packed up, had some fuel put in and headed home. We cruised at 3500 initially and just kept going lower as the clouds pushed us down. By the time we got into Ottawa, we were at 2500ft with clouds we could have stuck our hand up and touched.
A smooth touchdown at our home base, tucked her back in the hangar and called the local pizza joint for some carryout pizza.
Flight time: 1.8 hours up and 1.9 hours back = 3.7 Total
posted by Matthew at 7:12 PM
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