Tuesday, August 8th - Depart John C. Murno Airport, Hamilton ON Canada
Waypoint for air navigation purposes Erie PA
Arrive Dayton International Airport, Dayton OH
Flight time - about 2 hours 15 minutes
Hotel for 2 nights, Hampton Inn Vandalia
Rental car secured for ease of local transport
After a rather uneventful afternoon in Brantford, following a busy morning in Toronto Island Park that same day, we awoke to our last morning in Canada.
Wait, I lied. The afternoon in Branford was actually kind of eventful. Well, for my husband anyway.
Turns out the process of private flying OUT of the United States into Canada is quite painless. You do your customs advance notification paperwork, you file your flight plan or whatever else, and you're good. You can even do this documentation submission the day of your flight. The only minor sticking point in the Canadian process is that you have to be fairly precise with your landing time - I don't recall exactly what the parameters were, but I think it was +/-15 minutes of the arrival time to your designated airport (that you documented on your customs paperwork).
But for RE-ENTRY into the United States, OYE! The process is much more challenging.
Not only do you do your customs advance notification paperwork and so on, just like you do for Canada, in addition you have to do a customs advance notification telephone call AND you have to be even more precise with your arrival time - you CANNOT be early, and can only be within 0-15 minutes past your originally documented time.
To make matters worse, the rules for each individual US airport varies. So for example, we were originally going to fly into Saginaw MI, where the rules were: customs advance notification paperwork and phone call one business day in advance of your intended landing. Ok, technically, not that bad. Assuming they answer their phone. Or at least have a message line.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
During the entire 2-3 hour window when my son took his nap (after we visited Toronto Island Park), my husband closed himself in our hotel bathroom and every 5 minutes tried re-dialing the customs line for the Saginaw airport. He even got desperate and tried calling other international airports in the MI area ... no one answered and there was no way to leave a voicemail requesting a call back.
Encroaching on end of day, business hours 9am - 5pm, we threw in the towel on Saginaw and started to punt. Challenge: what small US airport along the Canadian border, near Toronto, would allow us to come without a day prior phone call?
After reviewing a few options, we realized that Dayton OH might potentially let us in without the day prior phone call. As an added bonus, it is an airplane mecca (more on this later), and also had a couple of stamping locations for my son's National Parks Passport (which you can read more about here).
Fingers crossed, we began the process of preparing to land in Dayton instead of Saginaw. And as an emergency backup to Dayton, we had our eye on Erie PA - since they have a much more lenient customs filing process, and would allow you to file as late as 2 hours prior to your arrival.
Not really knowing where our next morning would take us, we cooked dinner in our hotel room one last time ... thanks for the kitchen upgrade, eh! ... and called it a night.
Eh. Eh. Eh!!! (Just gotta throw a few more of those in, since this is the last of my Canadian recapping).
The next morning, wonder of all wonders ... the Saginaw Airport customs person called my husband. WTF?! Turns out they saw that we filed paperwork and wanted to complete our telephonic reservation. My husband simply told them that since they didn't answer their phone for over two hours the day prior, we had re-filed for customs clearance in Dayton instead (no, my husband did not tell customs to shove it ... he is much more polite than I am ... heh).
The kicker?! The Saginaw customs person didn't even apologize for not answering the phone or the fact that we had to fly almost 300 miles further south due to their underperformance. They simply said "OK, goodbye."
If you can't tell, I'm a little heated at Saginaw, folks. Do not recommend.
Whatever, the entire mishap actually worked out to make our trip even more interesting, because Dayton turned out to be pretty fun. And their customs agent was MUCH more friendly, might I add. So that was an extra little icing on the cake for us.
With all the customs hoo-ha, and using Erie PA as a waypoint to get our plane into US airspace sooner rather than later, by the time we landed and unloaded at Dayton it was pretty late. If I recall correctly, after a quick lunch on the way to the hotel, we ended up checking in at around 2pm. I felt a little bad about keeping my son up that long, but the bonus was we were only about 1 hour early for check in so a room was actually available. Good news for us, as our son got to take a solid nap in a hotel pack and play that day instead of the car.
For dinner that night, we opted to try out a nearby brewpub - The Hairless Hair in Vandalia - and weren't disappointed.
While the location is nothing to look at OUTSIDE, what they have inside is worth the trip. In fact, Hairless Hair had a summer pineapple IPA on tap that we liked so well we actually took a growler of it back to our hotel room. Plus, their in house made pizzas were fantastic.
After dinner at the Hair, we tucked in to our hotel for the night ... but the evening was none too peaceful. Apparently, our hotel neighbors must have had too much to drink or something because they came "home" around 2am and started a screaming match. It was so bad I debated calling the front desk or the police to file a possible domestic abuse report. But, as I was about to look for a phone, what I assumed was the woman of the couple screamed "FINE! I'LL JUST SLEEP IN THE CAR!" Then ... silence. There were a few more doors slamming that I just passed off as a drunk man taking out his aggression ... and eventually I dozed back off.
I guess I was none too surprised by the drunken melee, as about a quarter of a mile away from our hotel there was a literal DRIVE THROUGH LIQUOR STORE. Earlier in the night, I had found it kind of amusing, and had Googled photos of the place.
Apparently, it was less funny to me thereafter. Huh. Imagine that.
Thankfully, none of the midnight shenanigans disrupted my son, so at least he was well rested the next morning. I on the other hand ... was really looking forward to the coffee included with our hotel's hot breakfast.
Once we filled our bellies at the hotel's breakfast buffet, we looked at our adventure checklist for the day and noted that one of the items on our list - the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center - opened at 9am. Though we were a little early yet even for that, we had nothing else to do to pass the time, so we went on our way to explore.
Following a short drive from our hotel, we arrived at the center and were pleasantly surprised to find that the grounds actually opened at 8am. Which meant that although the educational building itself wasn't open yet, we could pass the time exploring outside until they opened their doors. Score!
So of course, we did just that.
The timing worked out wonderfully, as we had just finished making the loop of the informational kiosks and viewing the flying field when the building was opening for the morning. Not wasting much time (I mean, a newly walking toddler can only enter a building SO fast), we went inside to read more about the Wright Brothers using Huffman Prairie Flying Field as their training grounds for basically the world's first pilots.
While my son wasn't interested in most of that historical stuff, he did think sitting in an old timey flight steering rig with dad was pretty fun.
Those boys. They are going to have some flying adventures in the years to come. I just know it.
After finishing up inside, my husband talked with the ranger in the gift shop while I stamped my son's National Parks Passport. Based on the ranger's eagerness and encouragement of us to go visit the actual field itself, I got the impression that maybe not many people visit this sight, which is actually too bad - the view was beautiful and the staff was incredibly friendly. And since the ranger taking to my husband was so enthusiastic, we decided to take his advice and drove down to see the actual field itself.
Which, btw, the drive down there alone was worth the trip.
Excuse my terrible mid-drive photo with dashboard included. Don't worry, I was the passenger.
Since the field was mostly just an open, grassy prairie, I'm not going to post photos of it here. Mostly because it didn't really photograph well, and any photos I do post will only make the area look less impressive than it is. Just trust me that if you head out that way, its worth the extra 10-15 minutes of your day to swing by and make a visit.
After we wrapped up in the Huffman Prairie area, we headed to our next stop - the National Museum of the US Air Force.
Seriously. This place. Four hangers - FOUR GIANT HANGERS - filled with almost every kind of flying object imaginable. And I'm not kidding. Check out this range.
As you can tell, my son was not impressed by Air Force One. I, on the other hand, WAS impressed by those missiles. HUGE! Here's some additional pictures so you can see just how big they are.
We even walked through an actual scale model, retired training unit of a NASA space shuttle. To me, to see how SMALL of a space the astronauts actually live in during their missions - that was cool. Hands down one of the coolest things I saw in the entire museum. At least to me.
Huh. After looking through everything I took photos of, I guess I was more impressed by the space portion of the exhibit hall ... which was actually less than a quarter of what they had on display. Most of what was there was large military planes, various kinds of experimental small planes, and other similar items.
I guess part of my lack of enthusiasm/photography for those kinds of items may be that I've been saturated in the last 1-2 months at numerous air shows and a trip to Oshkosh Airventure 2017. Sorry. Google for yourself if you want to see more.
Speaking of lack of enthusiasm, at about the halfway point of touring the museum my son started to struggle. As you can see in the missile photo above, all the exhibits in the museum are simply stanchioned off with basic tube railings or poles with ropes. And of course, they are all perfectly toddler height. Which means my son, if let to roam free, could have easily ran under any restraint in the museum and touched whatever he wanted.
Not being one wanting to pay for historical aircraft damage repairs, we opted to leave our son in the stroller or carry him through the entire museum. For a new walker, that was torture. At least he played along for about an hour and a half or maybe even two hours during the visit. But by the 4th hangar, he was D-O-N-E done!
But, at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel for my son. Once we (quickly) cleared the last hanger and the gift shop, we took him outside and let him walk to the on site toddler playground, which he loved. I'm not sure if he understood this control panel and thought he was flying like dad, but ... either way, he liked it.
With lunch time at hand, and nap time quickly approaching thereafter, after about 20 minutes or so in the playground we started heading back to the general area of the hotel. And since I've never had an iconic Big Boy burger ...
As you can tell in the photo, my son was slightly less excited to meet Big Boy than I was. Hey, at least they had milk to make up for the trauma. Which came with an awesome accessory!
Curly straws. Heh. I didn't even use it and it still made me feel like a kid again.
Coming back to our hotel after lunch, I guess I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was to take in this sight.
In the lobby, we found two police officers chatting with the hotel's ... I'll assume she was the manager ... and a hotel trolley cart stacked haphazardly with a few random bags of luggage and a load of broken décor.
I'm sure you can guess where that came from.
Being a bit worried, and since the cops were blocking the elevators anyway, I told one of the cops our room number and mentioned that the people next door were yelling a lot last night. The first cop kept pretty mum just saying something like yeah, but the other cop basically said "yep, that's what happens with meth."
OH DAMN! Not what I was expecting to hear. Sorry drive through liquor store, you are redeemed!
Also, I can't quite figure out ... we were staying at a Hampton Inn which isn't exactly a bad hotel. And there were plenty of dive hotel options just across the street and down a block. So why did our "neighbors" pick Hampton Inn for their smash-up adventure?
I guess I will never know. Either way, my husband and I were glad to know that those people definitely weren't coming back for a second night. And while it was unfortunate for the hotel, the meth heads had damaged the room enough that it was not rentable for the next night, which ensured a peaceful night's sleep for us at least.
After chatting with the cops, and a nap for our son, my husband and I took off on one last adventure in Dayton that afternoon - the Wright Brother's Cycle Shop (another historic sight for the National Passport as well).
This building is actually the main building for the historical context of the site, and is set up on the mail floor (in the windows that face the intersection) to look like an old timey grocery. If you continue walking the sidewalk to the right of the building, back behind is a second free standing structure that is the actual cycle shop.
Inside the main building, however, is where the meat of the exhibit lies. There are a lot of informational kiosks about the history of the Wright Brothers - from print shop operators and bicycle salesmen, to aviation inventors. There was also some other information about African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. I was unfamiliar with Mr. Dunbar, so that portion was interesting to see as well.
My son, already a poet enthusiast apparently, enjoyed Mr. Dunbar's interactive poetry reading exhibit:
He actually stood there and listened to poetry readings for quite some time. #wearesocultured (sarcasm)
On the other hand, my son was less impressed by a later interactive exhibit featuring a large wood propeller and antique motor with lots of rubber belts. When he pushed that button, which my husband and I didn't even realize he was about to do since we were distracted by other informational items ourselves, the VERY LOUD motor fired up the giant prop ... and promptly threw my son into a crying panic.
The poor guy! His heart was going a million beats a minute after that. Amid the drama, another couple in the exhibit couldn't help but snicker at the scenario. After knowing our son was ok, of course.
After finishing up in the main building, we headed over to the cycle shop. There, another incredibly friendly ranger was available to offer information and answer questions. He even took one of the few family photos we had from the trip.
The shop also included a couple of informational signs that helped me close the loop as to why Wright Cycle evolved into Wright Flight.
Whew! After recapping the above, I just now realized how full of a day we had in Dayton! And I'm not even done talking about the day. Although, I don't have much more interesting to say, really - we simply had another dinner and had a quiet night's sleep.
Meth head free, might I add.
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