Champ at Mathis

Since I've worked late the last two nights, I decided to go in a bit late this morning so I could stay home (after the kids were off to school) and fly a little. I was irritated by my failed landing at Mathis, the little tiny airport that I tried to fly into with too much plane, so I switched to the Aeronca Champ and flew from Cherokee (where I had last landed), over to Mathis, about 15-20 miles to the south-east. Here I am flying the pattern downwind. Click to zoom and you'll see the cliff right at the end of the runway!

My first approach was too high, so trying to be more sensible than last time, I powered up and aborted that one. The next time I turned onto the base leg and final too soon and was off to the right and too close to adjust, so I flew the pattern one more time. On the third try I was lined back up correctly, so I headed in low and slow. To have any shot at all of making this landing, you have to be right at tree top level as you approach from the far side of the lake:
Here's another view of how low I was coming in. That tree on the left is higher than my wing and not far from me. I couldn't have gotten much lower than this without hitting something, but I still ended up too high! Next time, I'm going to need to clip the tops of the trees and then nose down and dive over the lake to lose about another 100' so I can actually touch down on this end of the runway:
Since I didn't know to do that, I overshot the end of the runway and ended up touching down at about it's midpoint. I was also fighting a cross-wind and trying to stay lined up on a runway that's narrower than my own wingspan! Recall that the whole runway is only 1800 feet, so by the time my left wheel touched down (see next photo), I only had about 900 feet left:When that wheel hit, I bounced up and over and ended up putting both wheels down in the grass. I got on the brakes pretty quick and tried to steer back on the runway, narrowly missing this sign as the taxiway comes in from my left:
I finally got her stopped just off the end of the runway, back in the grass:
In the previous flight, this is where I continued to roll until my little Tomahawk ran into those trees down the hill.

I think I'm going to stay here in Mathis with the Champ for a while and do some more landing practice. If I can land on this postage stamp of a runway reliably, then landing at larger airports like Dalton, where the runway is three times as long and three times as wide should be a piece of cake!