So Kay and I had a quick breakfast and drove to the airport at Benton, Kansas. This is a small town east of Wichita. The airport is small and I found out that it is privately owned. Imagine owning your own airport, it sounds like fun, for a while anyway. I took a brief tour of the hanger area after checking in at the office.

We were here to take pictures of Donna taking off in her plane. When we arrived, Donna was with her flight instructor doing pre-flight calculations. The office building is a very rustic structure with aviation fuel pumps out in front. If it weren't for the airplanes around the area, the office would look very much like a small country gas station.

The Benton, Kansas airport office building

Across the runway from the office is a row of houses that have what look like very large attached garages. The garages are actually hangers for private planes. This reminds me of an old housing development from the 50s or 60s in California where the streets are the width of airport runways and all the houses have attached hangers for a private aircraft.

The house across the runway has a very big "garage"

Inside the hangers were various types of general aviation aircraft. One airplane that really stood out is a replica of an old flying machine. Its engine looked strange because it was an old four cylinder water-cooled automobile engine. The radiator was mounted right up in front of the pilot. This made it necessary for the pilot to look around the radiator to see where the plane was going. I found out later that the engine in this particular plane is from a Model A Ford.

That is me in front of an unusual airplane

The Ford Model A engine and radiator used on
a replica of a very old airplane design

The plane Donna was to fly was being used by another person, so she had to wait for it to arrive. Donna told me that she had made arrangements for Kay and me to go along on the flight. I would have loved to go, but Kay is a "White knuckle flyer" in an airliner, so she wasn't ready to try flying in a small plane.

While waiting for the plane to arrive, I had a nice chat with Donna's flight instructor Jimmy. He is an interesting person to talk to. He used to be a Navy SEAL and now he makes his living as a flight instructor and teaches SCUBA diving. Jimmy is one of those fortunate people who can make a living doing what he loves to do. While I was talking to Jimmy he pointed out a B-1B bomber banking in the sky near the horizon.

Donna is performing a check-out of the airplane

Making sure everything works properly

When Donna's plane arrived, the pilot pulled it right up in front of the office. Donna came out to go through her pre-flight check of the plane. I followed her around to see what was involved in such an operation. Of course I embarrassed her by taking pictures of her at various points in the check out. Then it was time for Donna to get into the pilot's seat. I took a photo of her ready to fly. I then took up a position near one end of the runway.

Almost ready to take off for Ponca City, Oklahoma

It was fun being so close to Donna's take-off

As Donna's plane raced toward me, I took a series of pictures of the takeoff. The plane took off toward the north and slowly made a turn to the west with the final direction being due south.

About to fly under the moon

Just after turning south, the plane appeared to fly directly under a partially full moon. I wish I had a telephoto lens long enough to get a picture of that scene. The picture I did take was not very good. On the original photo, Donna's plane looked like a speck. After digitizing the picture and zooming in drastically, I was able to pull the image out that you see here. It took some special computer processing to get even that little bit of a picture, but I like it.

As Donna's plane disappeared into the horizon of a clear blue sky, Kay and I drove away to look at some nice houses near by. Then it was back to our motorhome to pick up a load of dirty clothes.

Kay and I went over to her parent's house so she could do a load of laundry. Lois was doing something she has enjoyed for years, working a crossword puzzle. Because of this hobby, Lois nows words most people never hear.

Lois is working on a crossword puzzle

While the laundry was washing and drying, Kay visited with her mother while I played with Pete and talked to George. Then with the second tub load going, Kay and I went over to my mother's place for a while. We visited for about an hour. We would be leaving for California the next morning, so we took this opportunity to say our good-byes.

We then went back to Kay's parent's house to finish the laundry and watch Monday Night Football on TV. While there, we ordered a couple of medium sized pizzas to be delivered to the house. After dinner I took our rental car back to our motorhome to unload our clean laundry and the stuff from the car in preparation to return the car.

A short time later Jim and Steven came home from bowling. I took my rental car to the airport to return it and Jim and Steven picked me up at the airport. From there we went back to Kay's parent's place to finish watching the game. Lois popped some popcorn for us with Pete getting his share. During the halftime, it was decided that we should go home and finish watching the game there. It seems strange for the game to be on so late. In the Central Standard Time Zone the game starts at 8PM and ends somewhere around 11:00. On the Pacific coast, where we live, we are accustomed to the game coming on at 6PM and being finished at about 9:00.