Crossing USA Border, Flying Home from Mexico (GLL, MMML, KCXL, KPAO)

Charlie, Marji, John were in Baja California 15-17 February. Our pilot was Charlie Jackson, Sun Labs’ Webmaster. Our  Cessna 182 Skylane II was one of four private planes on the trip from the Shoreline Flying Club. See the following blog entries for more:

• Flying to See Whales in Laguna San Ignacio, Baja
• Flying from Palo Alto to Mexicali (KPAO to MMML)
• Flying from Mexicali to Mulege, Mexico (MMML to GLL)
• Mulege, Mexico
• Flying from Mulege to Laguna San Ignacio and Back (Baja, Mexico)
• Fuel Run to Loreto, Mexico
• Loreto, Baja Mexico

Flying home again took a full day – leaving Mulege shortly after sunrise and arriving in Palo Alto at sunset. We got fuel and checked out with Mexican customs in Mexicali, then flew 9 miles north across the US border to check in at Calexico. The Calexico airport is directly on the US-Mexico border fence. We were treated with a great deal more dignity and respect by US Customs arriving in a General Aviation plane than I have ever been treated by the TSA on a commercial flight.

Our flying buddy was Radu but even though his plane took off first, it was much smaller than ours, so we lost track of him after Mexicali. All four planes got home safe. We were first back, two more arrived that night, and Radu got home the next day.

Photos were taken with a Nikon CoolPix S510 camera with an 8G SDHC photo card. We ran the photos through a filter to reduce some of the haze resulting from taking photos through a window. The filter produced some oddly intense colors.

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher