Avalon, CA
The buffalo burger flight destination of California. On the field at the airport terminal, open 365 days a year. The Killer Cookies are legendary — chocolate chip oatmeal walnut, get them. Indoor seating in the historic terminal plus a patio with views toward the mainland. Cary Grant flew over just for the buffalo burgers in his day. Pair with the Conservancy nature walk.
One of the most challenging and storied airports in American GA. Catalina sits at 1,602 feet on a mesa carved from two leveled mountaintops in 1941 by Philip K. Wrigley — son of the Wrigley gum heir who owned the island. During WWII, the entire island was leased to the US government; the OSS (precursor to the CIA) trained spies here. The airport reopened to civilian use in 1946. The 3,000-foot tabletop runway has cliffs at both ends, a 2.1% upslope on Runway 22 with a crest that hides the last 700 feet on landing, and notorious downdrafts. A Learjet overshoot in 1984 killed six and led to aircraft restrictions. Many flight schools require a "Catalina checkout" before solo. In 2019, US Marines and Navy Seabees rebuilt the runway in concrete. Approach the LA basin via the LAX SFRA from the north, or go around the Class B from the east. Land at noon, eat the buffalo burger, walk the Conservancy nature center. $35 landing fee. Worth every cent.
A 22-mile-long island 23 miles off the Southern California coast. The picturesque town of Avalon clusters around its harbor with the famous circular Catalina Casino building (1929, never used for gambling — it's a movie theater and ballroom) on the headland. Bison roam the interior — descendants of animals brought for a 1924 silent film and abandoned. Underwater, the kelp forests rank among the world's great dive sites. Best aerial perspective: fly over Avalon, then northwest along the spine of the island, then circle back to KAVX. Bring a camera.
At Long Beach (KLGB) you can't miss the Queen Mary: a 1,019-foot ocean liner welded permanently into the harbor. She was the fastest liner in the world from 1936 to 1952, held the Blue Riband for 14 years, and in WWII, painted gray as the Grey Ghost, carried 765,000 troops across the Atlantic, sometimes 16,000 at a time, zigzagging to outrun U-boats. Hitler put a bounty and a Knight's Cross on her; nobody collected. Her last crossing was 1967; Long Beach bought her, pulled the engines, and welded her to the harbor bottom as a hotel and museum. She's had a rocky financial run and has closed and reopened more than once, but as of spring 2026 she's open. Allegedly the most haunted spot in California, depending on which paranormal investigator you ask.
The field you're landing at carries one of the great American lives. Louis Zamperini — the "Torrance Tornado" — set a national high-school mile record here, ran the 5,000m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (closing with a 56-second final lap that caught Hitler's eye), and roomed with Jesse Owens. Then came the war: a B-24 bombardier, he went down in the Pacific in 1943, survived 47 days adrift on a raft in shark waters, and endured two years of brutal Japanese POW camps — the story Laura Hillenbrand told in Unbroken. Torrance renamed its airport Zamperini Field in his honor on December 7, 1946. The Western Museum of Flight sits right on the field, and a David Flores mural of Zamperini is part of the town's murals. He carried the Olympic torch past the very prison where he'd been held.
Orange County's airport started as Eddie Martin's dirt airstrip and flying school in 1923, became an Army airbase in WWII, and in 1979 was renamed for the Duke himself — John Wayne, a longtime Newport Beach resident who died that year. His statue stands in the terminal. A few miles south the land runs out at the Balboa Peninsula, the heart of Newport Beach: the 1906 Balboa Pavilion (a Queen Anne landmark on the National Register, built to lure buyers to what was then "swamp and overflow" marsh), the 1936 Fun Zone with its little Ferris wheel on the harbor, and the tiny Balboa Island ferry. Newport Harbor is one of the largest recreational small-craft harbors on the West Coast — a forest of masts from the air, with the OC coast running south toward Laguna.