Day 21 - Essex to Stow

Tony Cacciarelli • July 5, 2020

Essex, NJ (KCDW) to Stow, MA (6B6)

- July 5, 2019

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Original Instagram Post

A little light on pics today. 🙁

As expected, the departure out of Caldwell was kinda tricky this morning.

The bottom of the cloud layer at 8:30am was around 1800' and topped out at maybe 3000'-ish. It wasn't a solid layer, so there were spots where I could've climbed above it - except - the floor of Newark airport's airspace was at 3000' above me. So, in order to get above the cloud layer I would have to bust into Newark's airspace. To add an extra wrinkle to this, there were Temporary Flight Restrictions in the area that started at 10:45am due to the president's arrival at Bedminster. That meant I had to be clear of those before they became active. I had a few options, but ended up just staying below and away from the clouds until I was out from under the Newark airspace and then climbed through an opening to get on top. Worked out just fine.

At one point I was over the Quabbin Reservoir and decided it was too good to pass up, so I went in for a closer look. It's a beautiful reservoir with lots of small islands and tons of trees all along the shoreline. There were a few fishing boats but not much other traffic. I found out later that it's a main reservoir for the area, so it's a good thing I didn't land. I flew around the reservoir for a few minutes before getting back on track to my destination of Stow, MA. I'll try to get a short video together of this.

The high point of the day was meeting up with my wife, who flew in from LA today. We haven't seen each other in three weeks, since I started this trip. We'll be spending the next couple of days here visiting with family and friends. I have a bunch of people lined up for rides tomorrow!

😀👍🏼

I'd always planned to stop in Stow, MA as one of the key locations. Partly because it's a great small town airport (I highly recommend it) but it's also right near my wife's home town. So, the plan was for her to fly out commercially and we would meet up for a few days.

That meant having the timing work out so I would show up in Stow on the right day. I'd built in some padding in case I ran into any issues, but I'd also been making decisions based on this all the way back to Key West.

As it turned out, the timing was perfect. I got to Stow right around noon and Julie's plane landed later that afternoon. There'd been an earthquake in the LA area just a day or two earlier, so it ended up being a good time for her to get out of there.

My being away from home for two months was something we'd talked about a lot beforehand. One of the questions people always asked was how I managed to get the time to do this trip, and I was lucky that Julie was supportive of taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But, talking about being apart for a long time and actually being apart are two different things. I would call every night to give her an update on what happened that day, but it's not the same as being there. So, it was really nice to have this visit partway through the trip and get to reconnect. Plus, we were meeting up with her group of friends in the area, which is always a good time.