Yay! Another corn maze! This one has PIRATES!

Today’s practice flight was to a private airport about four miles north of Erie. The homeowners/aviators at Parkland Estates (where you can taxi from your backyard to the runway) were having their 12th annual chili cook-off and fly-in. Generally you’re not supposed to land at a private airport without permission; a fly-in announcement is pretty explicit about giving that permission. So me and my husband and our friend all went.

Private airports can be a little hard to spot from the air. The runway is usually narrow, fairly short, and often (though not in this case) unpaved. We overflew the field twice before the back seat passenger spotted it. And getting into a brand new airport pattern for the first time is always a challenge to a relatively inexperienced pilot (me). But once we were on the ground, everyone was friendly and all “Welcome to our neighborhood! Where’d you fly out of?” and dismissing my apologies with “Meh, any landing you walk away from, right?”

So we spent a pleasant couple of hours “hangar-flying” in the company of many happy, friendly people and their happy, exuberant kids, pigging out on chili and gawking at the architecture. (Me: “WHAT is that structure?” Him: “That’s a gazebo.” Me: “No. Behind it.” Him: “That’s a house.” House? Not, say, mansion? Castle, maybe?)

Then we thanked everyone profusely, dropped our bit in the donation jar, and flew home.

We spotted the corn maze as we were getting up to cruising altitude northeast of the Parkland airfield. All I knew at the time was that it was east of I-25. But because the designers of corn mazes are all about advertising themselves to pilots, it was a simple matter to read what they’d spelled out and Google it up:

Anderson Farms, whose theme this year is “Pirates of the Cornibbean.”

My husband, who took the pictures while suffering through two complete turns around the corn maze at a 30-degree tilt, hopes you enjoy the eye candy.