Galveston, IN
Galveston's turf strip is a leftover of the Navy: during the war it was Outlying Field 23008, one of NAS Bunker Hill's auxiliary fields, built with the same strange octagonal landing mat as its sibling at Converse, an eighteen-hundred-foot circle of pavement for training practice. It went civilian after the war, and the grass runway that survived still sits under Grissom's airspace; arrivals and departures are coordinated with Grissom approach to this day, between crops a hundred feet off the centerline and thresholds marked with yellow and black aluminum strips.
Originally Bunker Hill Naval Air Station (1942), then a Strategic Air Command base that stood nuclear alert through the Cold War before drawing down to a joint civil-military Air Reserve base in 1994. Renamed for astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom, the Indiana native born in Mitchell (southern Indiana, about 130 miles south of Peru). The outdoor aircraft display includes a B-47 Stratojet, B-58 Hustler, F-14 Tomcat, and A-10 Warthog — all visible from pattern altitude. The 12,500ft military runway occasionally hosts KC-135 tanker operations.
This forest-ringed reservoir was the site of the last battle fought in Indiana between Native Americans and U.S. military forces (1812). The annual Mississinewa 1812 reenactment every October is one of the largest War of 1812 reenactments in the country — sometimes visible from the air as encampments along the shore. The reservoir itself is beautiful from altitude, surrounded by hardwood forest with minimal development.
The only active circular paved airport in America. During WWII (the concrete mat went down in the fall of 1943), the U.S. Navy poured an 1,800-foot-wide octagonal landing surface here as a satellite field for NAS Bunker Hill. The design let pilots land in any wind direction — a concept that sounds logical but creates more problems than it solves (guaranteed crosswind on a curved surface). After the war, the Navy left and tiny Converse, Indiana inherited the strangest runway in the country. A single painted runway was added later, but the octagonal pad remains. It went viral in 2025 when a pilot found it on Google Maps and called it 'the weirdest airport in America.' Fly over it and the shape is unmistakable — a geometric anomaly in a sea of Indiana farmland. Land if you dare (1800ft!).
On the shores of Lake Shafer since 1926 — "There's more than corn in Indiana." A nostalgic Midwestern boardwalk amusement park with classic wooden coasters, rides, and a beach. Briefly closed in 2020, reopened by new owners and operating since. The narrow, twisting Tippecanoe River reservoirs (Lake Shafer and Lake Freeman) create some of the best low-altitude scenic flying in northwestern Indiana — like flying along silver ribbons through farmland.