Fogged Out

Monday morning the Southeast decided to have a blanket of fog far and wide.  Typically you get fogged in, this day we were fogged out.  Our Leaf peeping in the Carolinas was over, we had to turn in the rental car and head home.  While this delayed us a bit, Sunday morning we had awoken to a clear warm day.  We headed up towards Highlands NC, which I feared was a bit high for peak leaves at around 4000'  Our best leaves had been around 2000'. 

Our first stop was Whitewater falls, the falls are 411 feet and the highest falls East of the Rockies.  It’s an easy .4 mile walk to see the falls and you can get a better view by walking down 153 steps to the observation platform. It scores a high rating.  I rate falls based on the view divided by the effort to see the falls.  Great view and low effort equals a high rating.   There is also a great view of Lake Jocasee along with the surrounding mountains and foliage.

The next stop was near Cashiers, Silver Run Falls.  The falls are only .2 mile walk from the road along a flat path.  They are a small but nice water fall into a pond.  You can walk across some flat rocks to get a better view and I don’t usually advocate climbing across dangerous rapids but this particular ford is only a few inches deep and the flow is slow.  We were also wearing our waterproof hiking boots.  The boots needed a wash by now as the previous days had been quite dusty.

Our next two falls were repeats but we were so close, we figured we should revisit.  Dry Falls and Bridal Veil falls both offer the opportunity to see the back of water. There has not been much rain lately so Dry falls was less than half the flow of our last visit. 

Bridal Falls was more like Bridal drip….  We enjoyed both and finished by heading to downtown Highlands.  I had planned one more hike, it was a 4 mile hike with some big elevation changes to see Rainbow Falls and 2 others.  I gave CC the choice of  hike or town and thankfully she chose town.  With so little water I figured it was not worth the effort this trip.  Also it had warmed up to near 80 so maybe next spring.

As towns go, Highlands is a bunch of overpriced stores.  But it has a quaint look so I guess you're paying for the quaintness.  My guess is that they cater to the second home crowd that wants to spend $40 for a small pizza.  It is a nice stroll though, we did make one important purchase, Ice cream.  So to summarize, we chose ice cream over a strenuous 4 mile hike.  Luckily a recent upgrade reduced the planes weight several pounds so I guess I will add it back personally.

We took a slightly longer route back to Greenville but it kept us in the foliage zone and we really enjoyed our last taste of color.  We made a few stops at scenic overlooks to stretch the magic but eventually we made it back to the hotel for some snacks.  We did head downtown in the evening for a stroll and met up with some old friends for dinner.  

Going to sleep, the forecast was for Low IFR and it was supposed to persist until almost noon.  I backed up my alarm clock and went to sleep secure in the fact that the sun would eventually burn it off.  The wind forecast was for just a light headwind so overall looked like a nice ride home.  The morning weather did not disappoint.  I rolled over and looked at my phone around sunrise to see the fog had formed as promised.  I put the phone down and went back to sleep till 8:30.  

The hard part with fog is that it’s there and then it’s gone.  The 8 AM report had the temperature and dew point the same, I knew we just needed a few degree spread to clean it all up.  What I didn't know is how quickly that would happen.  Also the forecasts on these events are usually terribly off.  Since it would take a bit over 2 hours once we headed for the airport to get ready and get home I needed o guess when to leave so that we arrived with safe approach options.

I figured 9:30 would be a good time to go.  Our departure weather was perfect and  the weather just South of home was good so worst case we could fly another 10 minutes, gas up and wait it out.  I like Greenville because it's such an easy airport, even if it is a bit overpriced.  It's just 12 minutes to the FBO, they handle the rental car return and we preflight and load the plane.  They did offer to carry our stuff, it is full service and they are very nice but we just had stuff for 3 days so we handled it.

Departure is also easy with 11,000 of runway, we had plenty of margin.  We were number one for departure, had a mostly unrestricted climb to 9,000 and were on course to Savannah VOR expeditiously.  That was the good news.   I knew the winds were going to be strong around Greenville but the models said it would drop off around Augusta and then be negligible from Savannah home.  The models were really wrong.  First, they underestimated the wind by about 10-15 knots and the strong winds were present deep into Coastal Georgia.

Right before starting the engines I checked the weather one more time and our home airport had gone marginal VFR.  We still had a lot of low clouds on the rout though.  Around Saluda, SC we found the low clouds, they looked like they were trying to break up.  I guess that's how you get broken clouds.  The cloud formation was interesting. the clouds formed in long lines, like they had been farmed.  

I doubt anyone had a tractor that high up and if I had listened more during meteorology class I may have better understood the phenomenon.  As it was we just enjoyed watching them and snapping pictures.

The field was still marginal on our arrival and I was set up for the GPS 32 approach.  We were descending just off the coast in clear air with clouds over land.  As I descended for vectors to final I saw the airport off to my right and asked for the visual.  The controller seemed very happy to give me the approach as he was able to just send me to tower and did not have to vector me.  

We continued our descent and slid under the clouds to join a 3 mile final and the glideslope.  We had an easy touchdown a few minutes later.  Other than the headwinds which added 12 minutes and hitting a humongous bug at about 800' that left a big goo patch on CCs side, it was a nice uneventful flight.  The plane was soon pushed back and CC cleaned the bugs off the wings while I took the goo off the windshield.