More to the Airport Story

After I wrote yesterday's blog entry about riding Indy in the fog and accidentally getting too close to one of Willard Airport's runways, I got to wondering just how that might have happened. I'd ridden back in those fields before and never come across a runway; did the fog really disorient me that much?

It happened in the late 1980s and there was no internet access let alone Google Maps to check afterward. But I have those tools now, so this morning I satisfied my curiosity and pulled up some maps.

This is Unzicker/Landes Stables in Champaign, Illinois, the place where I boarded Indy. It's an old wooden barn (which has been kept in great shape) with an addition of an indoor arena with stalls on either side of it. There are turnout paddocks and a pasture, plus a koi pond (the greenish triangle  surrounded by trees at the bottom.) We had access to the fields around it for riding as long as we were careful to not damage the crops.

I think I must've wandered in the direction of the arrow; otherwise I would not have come across the runway as I did all those years ago.

This next photo shows the airport in relation to the barn, and the arrow the direction that I think I must've ridden that morning. Nowadays that would not happen. In the 1990s the airport had a chain link fence put around its perimeter with warning signs placed periodically that you would be trespassing on government property if you breached the fence.

Honestly, I think that was a good idea on many levels. I remember being scared when I realized that I was at the runway, and while the horses were used to the sounds of airplanes since the barn was so close to the airport, it is one thing to hear them fly overhead and another to have one swoop in and land right next to you!

The airport was busy due to its proximity to the University of Illinois. Having said that, the University of Illinois is a major university, but its airport is definitely not. President Clinton found that out to his sorrow. When he and Al Gore came to the University of Illinois in 1998 to speak, this happened to Air Force One:

The pilot was turning the plane in a very tight spot and dropped a wheel off the tarmac, getting stuck in the mud. (Go here to read a brief article about it from CNN.) President Clinton and his entourage had to wait for another plane to come (that is how we all learned that there was a fleet of presidential planes and that Air Force One was only one of them.)

It is still a small and busy airport, but the chances of horses wandering onto the runway are long into the past. There is fencing and security in the airport is much tighter.

Still, it's a fun story to tell!