One of my favorite local destinations is still Half Moon Bay, KHAF. On Sunday after church my wife and I were planning on having lunch with another couple, and I proposed Half Moon Bay as an option. The other guy was a pilot but not current, and the girls liked the idea, so we headed to the airport. The girls and my infant daughter were going to drive up, so they dropped us off and departed.

We started preflighting my Cessna 150, N88808, hopped in, and were disappointed to find a dead battery. No fear, that’s the benefit of being checked out in multiple aircraft at the airport! We put the 150 away and switched to a C172, within a few minutes we were airborn! The nice thing about the 172 in this case is it was faster, so even after our delay of preflighting two aircraft, we still beat the girls by about 10 minutes.

Below is an image I didn’t photograph, but I found it on Flickr and was licensed via Creative Commons so I thought I might share it here to give you an idea of the airport environment. That is the Half Moon Bay airport in the foreground. The restaurant is just off the South end of the field by the boats inside the harbor. Upper left of the image is San Francisco International, and the San Carlos Airport is on the right side, with Palo Alto Airport just a bit further South. Oakland International is directly across the bay from SFO.

My favorite restaurant up there is the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, they’ve got excellent food, plus indoor and outdoor dining. We didn’t take the dogs this time, but if you eat outdoors, dogs are welcome. We had a great meal, walked the girls out to the parking area so they could see the plane, then departed back for Watsonville.

This time, since there were no delays in switching aircraft, even though we flew down along the coast, we still beat them by probably an hour, and got to see a great sunset starting along the way Here’s a picture of my wife Ellen and I, along with our daughter Daria.