Fullerton, CA
Brian and Sherri White reopened the Fullerton terminal restaurant in September 2020 (took over from Tartuffles era). They also run the highly-rated Galley Cafe in Newport Beach. Aviation-themed with a runway down the middle of the dining room, etched DC-3 glass doors, traditional American diner fare. AOPA postcard featured. Watch out for the tall tower SW of the field on approach.
Opened 1928 as Fullerton Field. The last GA-only airport in Orange County — KSNA went commercial in the 1960s, others closed. Surrounded entirely by neighborhoods, with strict noise abatement and a calculus-required short-runway profile. Hangars house everything from Pitts Specials to North American T-6s; the field is a regular stop on aerobatic competition circuits.
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.
On the west side of John Wayne Airport sits a tight, beautifully kept collection of WWII machinery that mostly still flies. Founded in 2009 by Major General William Lyon, the museum's aircraft are all in airworthy condition — the star is a B-17G Flying Fortress named "Fuddy Duddy" that appeared in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! and once carried General Eisenhower as a passenger. Alongside the airplanes (a B-25, an A-26, a C-47, a DC-3) is an unsettling piece of history: a 1939 Mercedes-Benz parade car originally delivered to Adolf Hitler. The docents are often WWII veterans themselves. On the right day, you might catch one of the warbirds taking off.
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.
1 Rocket Road — where every Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and Starlink satellite is designed and built. Mission Control sits across the parking lot from the production floor. The full-scale Falcon 9 booster outside the front entrance is a real flown rocket. Public tours suspended; the lobby cafe is occasionally accessible. KHHR airport is across the street — pilots flying in can see the Dragon test stand from the GA ramp.