Goodbye, NYC…Hello, Denver!

My five days on the east coast were just pure heaven. Too soon, it was time to head home.

Do you need to catch up on all the New York City goodness? Find that here.

Thursday morning came, and we were on the hotel shuttle back to the FBO at Teterboro Airport.

Gladys had a great time on the ramp while we stayed. I can’t believe that this trip is over already!

Well, almost over. We are flying home, after a quick fuel stop at Denver Centennial Airport. Then we will wait at our home airport for about an hour before heading north to Bremerton for a long weekend!

Luckily, I brought some Tide. And I know my hotel in Bremerton has laundry facilities!

Just like it always is, the ramp at Meridian Aviation was packed. This airport is a popular place for private airplanes carrying people who need to get into the City.

We got some fuel.

And I got out the blankets, because that always makes a long flight more comfortable!

And soon we were loading the airplane up for our flight towards home!

We were fourth in line for takeoff today, but it went quickly.

And thank goodness that the weather was nice! Teterboro is always the first one to be punished when bad weather happens! We’ve been stuck at the beginning of the runway for hours!

As you can see from the mostly-blue skies, that wasn’t the case today.

There are seven FBOs located at this busy airport, and they are always full!

All the cool people come to Teterboro, obviously.

It was soon our turn for takeoff on Runway 1!

We lined up on the displaced threshold and held until cleared for takeoff. We had to wait for the jet that had just landed to be off the runway before we could roll.

I love this picture…one last glance back at New York City!

Can you see the One World Trade Center?

We climbed through a few cloudy layers before finally breaking out on top in some nice, visual-conditions weather.

And then we came across a rather large body of water.

Hi, Lake Michigan!

I don’t have superior lake knowledge…I just knew that it was Lake Michigan because of this fun city on the western shores!

Can you name that place?

I’ll give you a clue…

In this shot, you can see downtown, O’Hare Airport, and Midway Airport…where we usually land.

You got it!

Clouds are always so pretty from above.

And, apparently, my control yoke needs to be dusted.

Note to self.

We plugged along for several hours at Flight Level 430. Next time that we see the ground, we will be landing on the south side of Denver at Centennial Airport.

And, as you can plainly see, Denver does not mess around with their arrivals!

Sheesh!

Luckily, we were cleared pretty far down the line of the arrival. We didn’t have to fly the whole thing. It helps that we were landing in the middle of the day on a slow Thursday afternoon, right?

I love this picture of the snow-covered fields as we got closer to Denver.

But at least the blue skies were happening here, too.

In fact, it was sixty degrees during our short fueling stay today! That felt like a heat wave after being in chilly New York City for the past five days!

You’ve probably heard how frickin’ huge the new Denver International Airport is. You can plainly see its size from the air as we flew right over it towards Centennial.

Hi, Downtown Denver!

And hello to your pretty snow-capped mountains, too!

Thanks to the tropical temperatures, there wasn’t as much of that nasty white stuff in town.

After we touched down, this Sky Crane helicopter landed right behind us. They don’t have to fly a normal traffic pattern but can simply land on the ramp instead of the runway.

I love Centennial. We purposely stopped here for fuel so our passengers could eat a yummy lunch at The Perfect Landing Restaurant upstairs in the FBO.

Amazingly, there are four FBOs on this little airport. But it’s a popular place for people trying to get into Denver. The international airport is thirty-five miles outside of town!

Here is that Sky Crane after he touched down! Isn’t it huge?!

Everyone in aviation has a sense of humor…the bright orange paint job led them to name it Annie.

We are half-way home! Let’s get some fuel and be on our way!