Odd troubles with new scenery and airport

This is an odd one...First - If I select "Create and Flight" and specify my airport but select "Active Runway" I spawn in the middle (more or less) of the airport and not on a runway. Yes I have start points, yes they work if I expressly select them, as do the parking spots.Second - right next to the airport is a dry lake bed. when every thing is loaded it's A-ok. However, sometimes things can take a long time to load on my comp - in this case the area that's supposed to be dry is CLEARLY water... When this is the case, I have a VERY rough terrain mesh and the textures are totally blured out. Frankly it looks like the textures loaded at this point are the same one's you see if you hit CTRL-S and zoom out so you can see the whole Earth. As time goes by, the terrain gets more detailed, buildings appear, textures get sharper in several steps, and the water disappears.I'm guessing there's no way to change that without major BGL surgery... can anyone confirm that?