Bob Burley, a tenant at the Morrisville-Stowe Airport, said the airport was packed last week with planes, passengers and pilots who flew in to catch the sight of the total solar eclipse on April 8. He said all northern Vermont airports reported similar attendance.
“Pilots, families, passengers and pets joined drive-in attendees and spread out in orderly fashion with blankets, chairs and coolers, enjoying a perfect Vermont spring day,” Burley said. “The setting, between the Green and Worcester mountains, presented a scenic venue for the astrological event.”
As a bonus, early arrivals were treated to a saxophone-playing pilot who serenaded everyone who arrived earlier that morning.
Burley said he didn’t get the saxophonist’s name — he was busy on the radio with incoming aircraft — but said the musician was a Coast Guard Flying Club instructor and member of the Coast Guard band who flew in with a couple of students.
Burley, a classical music student “earlier in life,” was able to identify a mix of warmup drills and solo excerpts from a Sousa march or two and the “Allegretto” from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, which he said mixed “with the melodious background of props and engines.”
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