Pennsylvania to the Florida Keys

[Dennis Keselman]

I'll be taking a C182 in the winter (VFR only) down to the Key Largo from southeast Pennsylvania. I've traveled the I-95 corridor dozens of times by car. Are there any stops that you'd recommend making by plane that would be worth it but otherwise unlikely to hit with a car? Thinking of avoiding the bigger cities. Destination will likely be Miami Homestead and then drive from there to Key Largo.

 

[MooneyDriver78]

KFFA


Tom

 

[mcmanigle]

Being in North Carolina, I'm a little biased, but KFFA is definitely up there in terms of "places to have in your logbook." If you're looking for a random half-way food stop, you could do worse than BQ1, although with the length of your trip I'm sure there are lots of good options to choose from. If you're looking for a spot to spend the night, Charleston, SC might not be a bad.

 

[RyanB]

FGU is a very worthwhile stop.

 

[Jim K]

Kssi in se Georgia is a beautiful little town with a nice airport and some excellent restaurants. We got stuck there by weather last year; nice place to be stranded.

Kffa is a bit out of the way, but definitely on my bucket list.

 

[kath]

I had a good time visiting Jekyll Island, GA.
Little red golf carts for rental. Campground on the island. Turtle rehabilitation center with tours. Other neat historical things. Scenic.

 

[belbert]

All very good recommendations. You might want to add Tangier Island (TGI), Billy Mitchell (HSE), Orcacoke (W95). Arcadia (X06) in FL is highly spoken of but I've never been there.

 

[unsafervguy]

tuesday is taco day at x06

 

[mirage00]

I’m heading to the Keys first week of March. I was going to fly into KMTH, just wondering what made you pick homestead?

 

[flyingron]

FGU is a very worthwhile stop.

WHen I lived in Virginia and headed down to St. Simons Georgia, we would top at Fayetteville (the big airport) or Hilton Head. Fayetteville was friendly and sent us to a fabulous local barbecue place (had two guys' names on it but I don't recall, probably not there any more).

 

[flyingron]

By the way this is where we stayed in Key Largo and we loved it: https://www.konakairesort.com/

 

[wrbix]

KBHC

Cheap fuel, VERY nice FBO, friendly folks, easy in and out. Recently resurfaced.
I always fuel there on way to KCDK.

 

[Clip4]

X23 for cheap fuel and courtesy car for lunch.

 

[cowman]

Just throwing this out...

KEYW and KMTH are both nice airports to fly into. Of course the fuel is high and there are ramp fees(IIRC around $20/night or so for both) but you can fly VFR along the coastline and see views like this.


Every time I've been down the extended weather forecast says scattered T-storms daily but the reality in the morning has always been a low layer of scattered clouds and maybe a couple of isolated rain showers. On the ground you'll probably see a 1-2 min light-moderate rain shower every day, in the air they're usually small 1-2mi rain clouds that can easily be flown around. There's almost always a scattered-few cloud layer around 1500-2500'. The beautiful thing about following the coast is the ocean is at sea level so cruising at 1,000' with your wingtip hugging the coastline is reasonably safe and gets you a beautiful flight in. I know for those of us who don't live near water it's a little intimidating but the airplane doesn't know the difference and believe me if I can do it anyone can- this isn't a challenging trip to make.

We used ebikes in Marathon, you could also get a rental car or walk/uber around. Key West OTOH is somewhere you don't want a car- just use Uber/walking/etc. The hotels are all $$$ resorts but they're nice and worth it for a few nights. Many have shuttles to the downtown shopping/restaurant areas. I was just in Marathon back in OCT, almost everything was open.

Some day I'll probably want to drive down the keys too, but I just really love making that particular flight.

 

[Pugs]

In GA for a couple extra days waiting for weather from a similar trip from MD to Lakeland FL in the 182. We got a late start and overnighted in Florence SC on the way down. That broke it into two three hour legs for the whole trip. Turn there was fine but no Uber in Florence so cabbed it a short distance to the Hyatt Place downtown and had dinner across the street @ https://www.townhallflorence.com - recommend both.

Coming out of there they cleared us direct SSI (Saint Simons) and that would have been a nice scenic trip down the coast, alas, were were above solid clouds almost all the way to Lakeland.

Let me also toss in a plug here for Shelter in Lakeland - we came in on Super Bowl Sunday and they were awesome.