{"id":290,"date":"2008-04-26T20:25:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-27T04:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=290"},"modified":"2008-04-26T20:25:10","modified_gmt":"2008-04-27T04:25:10","slug":"the-buckhorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"The Buckhorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had breakfast at the Buckhorn today. For me this requires a flight to New Cuyama airport (L88<\/a>), and that’s really why I go. New Cuyama <\/a>isn’t near anything. It’s a small oil and ranching town that’s a place to gather if you’re working in the area or passing through. There’s a gas station, a motel (the Buckhorn) and a recently re-opened caf\u00c3\u00a9. It’s a tiny, friendly town – the smallest nearby that’s easily airplane accessible.<\/p>\n

Of course, a town of 800 people doesn’t have a big airport. I suspect that I have friends who wouldn’t consider L88 an airport at all. It looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a> \"New<\/a><\/p>\n

That picture on the right is from my “lonely windsock” series. All these images link to larger versions.<\/p>\n

To me this is a perfectly wonderful airport. Look – amenities:<\/p>\n

\"Sign<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside is a visitors log in which some wag had given his reason for visiting\/destination as “hopelessly lost.” I always sign.<\/p>\n

Boy did I make a crappy landing here today. I went around once and then landed fast in some turbulence (and a nice hot layer of ground effect). It wasn’t very pretty at all. I could tell you a story about how the narrow runway created an optical illusion and all that, but I should probably spend my time hitting a few more small fields.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I tied down, watched an enormous rabbit saunter across the runway before I could get my camera working, and signed in. (Seriously, it wasn’t so much a rabbit as a jackalope<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Buckhorn was pretty busy. It’s a motel as well as a restaurant, and a couple families were checking in as well as a pretty full house of eating customers. I had a tri-tip sandwich at the counter and soaked up the considerable ambiance. Sadly the advertised “karaoke cook” didn’t seem to be in.<\/p>\n

I finished up, had another short look around and saddled up to leave. Another pilot was inbound and I gave him a wind report and he let me leave first. The trip home was gorgeous, but uneventful.<\/p>\n

\"32169<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had breakfast at the Buckhorn today. For me this requires a flight to New Cuyama airport (L88), and that’s really why I go. New Cuyama isn’t near anything. It’s a small oil and ranching town that’s a place to gather if you’re working in the area or passing through. There’s a gas station, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-blogbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}