Page 16 - Volume 14 Issue 3

An example of just one of hundreds of interesting rock formations within Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Joshua Tree is loaded with hiking trails and picnic areas that put you up close and personal with such terrain. This park is an easy drive from the L.A. Basin, especially if your flights are taking you to the airports on the eastern side of the city.
Shark Valley Loop, Everglades National Park, Big Cypress, Florida: Just outside of Miami’s western suburbs is the Shark Valley entrance to Everglades National Park. The same 15-mile paved loop is shared by park tour trams and bicyclists. The visitor’s center offers bicycles and safety equipment for rent for cycling as little or as much of the mostly flat Shark Valley Loop as your time or fitness level allows. Close encounters with napping and lethargic alligators are common along the trail. Native birds and other wetlands wildlife is abundant, as well. At the half-way point, the Shark Valley Observation Tower allows a bird’s eye view of the largest gators living in the park (some exceeding 30-feet in length), as well as a panoramic spectacle of the swampy lands that make up the Everglades.
Shedding a Tier
The areas discussed above are relatively well-known and popular upper tier sites within the NPS. However, the lower tier sites within the NPS (and on BLM lands) are also chocked full of perfect layover diversions.
14 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
The Wupatki National Monument in northern Arizona is one of many historical Native American ruins scattered across the Four-Corners area. It is only 30 miles north of the popular Flagstaff area, making it a perfect day or partial-day trip from that region.
Presidential homes, libraries and birthplaces, historic military forts and battlefields, memorials, ancient Native American sites and ruins, and so much more all make for great day or partial day excursions. Below are just a few (of the hundreds of options) to introduce some possibilities to you and to whet your appetite for layover explorations.
Honoring the Wright Brothers: What better diversion for a waiting aviator than exploring sites honoring the Fathers of Flight? Dayton, Ohio, has an entire Aviation Heritage Park devoted to the bicycle mechanics with preserved or exact reproductions of their workshops, homes, labs, etc. All of this is within minutes if you’re laying over in Dayton, and within an hour if you’re killing time at any of the Cincinnati, Ohio/Covington, Kentucky area airports. The Wright Brothers National Memorial is located at the Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, site of their flight testing leading up to and including the first powered, heavier-than-air, controlled flights in history. While this area has its own dedicated airport (Kittyhawk Airport), it is also only about a 1.5-hour drive south of the Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia, area.
MARCH 2020