In this year’s Motoring Challenge the two big point earners, worth nine each, are the Wienermobile and a Blimp. We snagged the rolling hot dog back in February, so now we needed the blimp.
Turns out there are 3 active Goodyear Blimps, each with their own home base. The first is just where you’d expect it to be, Akron, Ohio, Home of the Goodyear Company. The other two are on opposite costs of the country, Carson, CA (AKA Los Angeles) and Pompano Beach, FL (AKA Miami.) Akron and Pompano are around 600 miles away, neither would be an attractive drive, and LA, forget about it. Our best bet would be to catch one in its travels.
Unlike the Wienermobile, there is no smart phone app to keep track of Goodyear’s 3 airships, but you can find out where they are going to be appearing right on its very own web page. And as it turns out Wing Foot 3 would be providing aerial coverage of the RBC Heritage Golf Tournament in Hilton Head Island, SC (a mere 130 miles away) on April 20 & 21.
We had a Miata Club event on Saturday, so we planned a day trip down to HHI on Sunday. Knowing they wouldn’t fly the blimp back to its home base for one night it would have to be parked at an airport overnight. But, which one? The small airport on the Island or the bigger one near Savannah, GA. A blimp would be too big to put in any old hanger, so it should be visible by driving by. We would leave early in the morning, take a picture and be back home by mid-afternoon.
Because HHI is sort of on the way to Savannah the plan was to check there first. Plus an early Sunday morning arrival on the Island would make the normally busy traffic somewhat lighter. We plugged the airport location into Google and made a bee-line there. The road leading to the terminal had several places where we could see onto the runway, but no blimp sightings. Pulled into the small parking lot out front and walked into the terminal. We could see through several of those windows onto the runway too, but no blimp. We cruised more of the roads surrounding the one runway getting a few more peeks, but never saw a blimp.
We did spot a vintage VW Beetle in a parking lot of a small business park near the airport. This fits one of the Motoring Challenges, My First Car, because Donna’s first car was a 1971 Super Beetle. After watching us park near his car in two different spots and taking pictures, the owner of the car came out and asked if we needed any help. After explaining what we were doing, I asked, “Have you seen the blimp?” He said it wasn’t at this airport, it was at Savannah International.
That airport is north and east of the city of Savannah and it is easily accessible from Hilton Head in about an hour. The longer, but only slightly quicker way is US-278 to I-95, yuck, so we took the shorter route along scenic coastal back roads that took 5 minutes longer. We circled the perimeter roads around the airport, including a dead end road that led to the Gulfstrean factory where we passed a couple of private jets having their jet engines tested. No blimp. I then circled back and drove near the terminal to see if we could get a view on that end of the airport. As I slowed at a crosswalk near the departure gates there were a couple of women in yellow vests that read SECURITY. I asked them had the seen the blimp. Both responded with, “What blimp?”
It was now nearing noon and by now we should have been heading home. CBS’s coverage of the final round of the tournament wasn’t supposed to start until 3:00 PM. I suggested we head out to I-95 and find a lunch place before starting back to Aiken. Donna countered with, we should drive back to Hilton Head and get lunch there, kill some time shopping and then hunt the blimp in the air. So we re-traced our back road route the HHI.
On our way back through Bluffton, SC we stopped into a little restaurant that we ate at about 28 years ago called Squat ‘N’ Gobble. Probably the only thing different since that last time were the waitresses. Donna had Crabby Benedict and I got a Western Omelet. We did try and eat here a few years back, but it is so popular there was a 30 minute wait (and we don’t wait.)
Our big problem in capturing the airborne blimp would be we couldn’t get close to it. The golf course they were using is in Sea Pines Plantation that takes up the whole end of the island. It is a gated community and any old Joe can’t just drive in. Normally you can buy a day pass for $5 to go to the shops and restaurants in the Harbour Town area, but not during tournament time. Even spectators with tickets had to park on the other end of the island and get bused into the plantation.
When we got back on the Island we took the Cross Island Parkway, which is a toll road that by-passes the congested US-278 to go from one side of the island to the other, because there is an elevated bridge on the end closest to plantation and we figured it would give us a nice view of the sky. It did but there wasn’t a blimp in sight. We still had an hour and a half before the TV coverage was to begin, so we parked and wandered the shops of Coligny Plaza, had some ice cream, decided to toss in the towel and head home.
We decided to drive back across the Cross Island Parkway to get another skyward peek. When I rolled to a stop to pay the toll I asked the women inside if she had seen the blimp. “I can’t see nothing in here,” came the reply. we half repeated the trip to Savannah in hopes that the blimp might come that way, but no blimps were sighted.
We will have another chance at seeing the blimp because it will be covering another golf tournament in Charlotte (about 160 miles away) the first weekend in May…
