Had a blast in Laughlin, the flying was smooth and easy though, as with any trip, there are moments of interest. By far the biggest was the wind this morning for takeoff – 26 knots varying from 0 to 30 degrees of crosswind, easily the strongest winds I’ve ever taken off in. Related to winds, Laughlin is odd in that it has no weather reporting but you can get METARs for it online. When you ask to taxi, the tower will give you the current weather. Speaking of the tower, it closed on us about 8 miles out. They close at 6pm but since they are in Arizona, that’s 5pm my time so we were the first uncontrolled people in. I was able to get the weather from them before they shut down (winds were dead calm) and I remembered to put the runway lights on, sure helped in finding where to land! Stayed up too late and was pretty tired this morning, did not make a pretty landing back in San Diego, flared too high, as is my regular fault.
I had promised some cool Google Earth maps but I had some problems with the GPS mount and the iPaq switching itself off so I ditched it and went VOR to VOR instead, good VFR boy that I am. Hopefully next time.