Multimedia trip to Luray, VA

The weather today was too good to pass up so K and I decided to take a flight over to Luray, VA. We grabbed up the cameras and a bit of picnic food and headed to the airport (after a good weather/TFR check of course).

I performed the preflight checks while K did some interior decorating with the portable GPS, headsets, cameras, and charts. We added another 1/2 quart of Aeroshell 15W-50 to bring Thursday's post-oil-change levels up to snuff for the longish flight.

We flew direct both ways, using flight following from the gracious Potamac Approach and Washington Center folks. We battled a nasty headwind on the way up, which at one point (during a climb) had us getting a lovely 40 kt groundspeed.



Some of the landmarks we saw included:

Paramount's Kings Dominion off I-95:


The Blue Ridge Mountains (they peak around 4000' MSL in this area)


Skyline Drive



After a while we landed at Luray:


At Luray we were met by a very helpful gentleman named John. He fueled us up to replace the 1.9 hours we burned and even gave us a van ride to and from the nearby Luray Caverns. If we had had more time we would have made the 20 minute walk each way down Cave Hill, Rd. instead.

At the caverns we had our picnic:



And I called my Dad to let him know we had landed (I "filed my flight plan" with him instead of the FAA):



We only had time to check out the Car Museum and gaze at the Bell tower:



Then we called John and asked him for a ride back.
He came out quickly and a few minutes later we were preflighting for the trip back:



We taxied back to use 22 for takeoff (note: there are no turnarounds at either end of the runway - just grass that didn't look inviting).
A quick checklist and run-up and we were heading home:



We gained some altitude before pointing to the mountain range and then crossed it at 5,500':



We saw a much nicer 130-140 kts of groundspeed on the way home giving us a mere 1 hour of flight time to get back.



One of the issues I learned more about during this flight was a touch of mountain flying. We had to cross a 4000' range to get to Luray and felt some definite downdrafts on the leeward side, even at 6500'. There were 2 distinct times that I had to use a climbing attitude just to maintain altitude. Once we were close to the ridge and crossing into the windward side it was smooth and I dropped the throttle for a steep descent (1200-1500 FPM) into the Luray area.

On the way back we were lower, only 5500' over the peaks, and felt 2 really good bumps and a number of decent smaller ones as we went to the leeward side, maybe a mile from the peak. I just backed off on the speed and told K to tighten her seat belt and ride it out. We were through that mess after about 3-4 minutes. I don't think they would have even qualified as "moderate" turbulence, but they weren't too far off.

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