We had planned to fly to Greenville to see Artisphere, an annual art festival. I had it all planned, I even got a great rate at the Marriott I like. Well then my daughter got engaged and my wife decided we should go up and see the ring and celebrate with the happy couple. The problem was the only weekend they had open was the weekend of Artisphere. Time to change plans.
Even though Artisphere was out, I still wanted to stop by Greenville. Looking at the computer, stopping by Greenville only added 30 minutes to the trip. So I replanned everything, we would now leave Tuesday instead of Wednesday, get some hiking in, visit some friends and then off to DC. It was gonna be a busy week.
We had a party at the hangar Saturday so the plane was in the corner. Monday we dropped by and returned the tables and chairs I had borrowed. I did a pre-preflight, topped the oil, cleaned the windows and made sure we would be ready in the morning. My last preparation was prepping for an oil change. It would be time when we returned so I took everything out and positioned things so I would be ready to drain the oil upon our return.
The total route for this trip is 1150 miles, in theory an airliner could do that in 2.5 hours. With all their overhead though, it takes a lot longer to fly this route on the airlines. First problem, there is no direct flight service to Greenville. Getting to Greenville on the airlines is about 10 hours door to door vs. less than 3 in the plane. Yeah Baron!
Tuesday morning the weather was excellent for a change. Clear skies, a small tailwind and smooth. It was still an interesting flight for a fun reason. Around Savannah we were warned of a similar call sign on frequency. It was Cirrus 6BZ. I never thought I would fly by the aircraft with the next sequential tail number.
Overall it was a simple flight. We took off runway 5, got on course and had an unrestricted climb to 9,000’. Other than a slight turn at SAV there was little navigation work. We have also done this route many times so we really don’t need the GPS, we can go old school and just look out the windows.
Our arrival into GSP was a bit longer than expected. We were sequenced behind an airliner and the controller had us well separated. We made a nice touchdown and taxied onto the FBO ramp. They were ready for us and while we were parked a bit far from the door, they did come out with a golf cart and drive us to the building.
We were in for a surprise, it had been a few years since our last visit and they had rebuilt the entire place. It was pretty swanky. They were famous for their ice cream and while they moved the cooler, they still had a fine selection of treats that included ice cream, sodas, chips, and much more.
Avis had our car waiting and the line guy helped us load up. The Courtyard had our room ready. The Courtyards are odd, we use them regularly. When you check in as a Bonvoy member you can get 500 points or food credit. These credits vary widely by location.
The points are worth about $4 in credit towards a future stay. The offer today was $40 in food credit at the mini mart. Given the options, we took the food credit and loaded up on junk food for the trip.
After a quick clean up we headed off for a short hike. I found a park with a small waterfall we had never visited. It was only about 45 minutes away and we were soon lacing our hiking boots. We took it easy, the entire walk was only 1.5 miles. The waterfall was small but good. Small meant there was no chance of falling in and being swept away to our death. Worse case would be getting slightly damp.
After the hike we headed back to take a rest before heading out to see some old friends. We capped the day off having dinner with them. A nice night but the good weather we enjoyed was changing. Wednesday was supposed to be nice but then turn ugly.
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