Getting to Palmyra - the rest of the saga

This morning we had two cabs take us from the hotel back to Bradley to catch our plane. The pilots were flown in yesterday from the mainland to Kona. They were originally scheduled to fly in today for the charter going from Kona to the mainland on Monday. The plane landed this morning around 8:15 am from Kona. One of the Gulfstream II pilots who flies to Palmyra regularly agreed to go out with us as a passenger to help out the pilots with any landing questions since these pilots (like the ones yesterday) haven't flown to Palmyra before.

Brenda provided us with a very nice full breakfast spread.  In addition, Paul brought a couple "butter avocados" and a baguette for us to try.  Yum.

breakfast spread at Bradley

skins of the consumed butter avocados

It was a good thing we ate a big breakfast. This is the "cheap" flight compared to yesterday with no food, just water. Also we don't have a flight attendant to take care of our every need.

As we sat in the plane with the engines running I overheard in the cockpit that no flight plan had been filed.  Finally we got the green light and took off around 10 am only a half an hour behind our scheduled departure.

The good news is we finally made it, and this time the weather was clear enough for some aerial photos.  Last year it was raining when we landed.

We flew over Kingman Reef on our route to Palmyra

An aerial shot of Palmyra

A second aerial photo of Palmyra