Air Museum

The boys and I were reminiscing about the warm days of summer today and Caleb brought up our trip to the beach. It was his favorite part of the summer and when I asked him what things he liked best about the beach, one thing he mentioned was the "place with all the planes" - the Air Museum.

I had never been to the museum myself and I honestly didn't think I would enjoy it that much. I figured I would sacrifice some of my time to do boy stuff and that way, my boys couldn't complain too much when we went and did some girl stuff - shopping. Little did I know just how cool the Air Museum was.

First of all, it's huge. Even from a distance.

Secondly, there are real airplanes everywhere - even on the entrance sign. The boys took one look at this and started whooping in the back seat. They also threw in a few machine gun sounds.

I walked into the gift shop and fell in love with all the hanging airplanes. They were just ... cool.

Can't you just picture a little boy's room with all these airplanes hanging from the ceiling?

Couldn't you just picture my bedroom with all these airplanes hanging from the celing?

No? Mark couldn't either when I suggested the idea.

Once you pay to actually go into the museum there are a ton of airplanes to look at but there are a lot of other things as well. Several artifacts from the first planes flown, as well as a written description so that people like me would understand exactly what I was looking at.

                                       

                 

The boys couldn't get enough of the planes and they wanted to look (and touch) every single one of them.



Then of course, they pretended to be flying every single one of them.

I kept staring up at the ceiling. The rafters are wood and they are amazingingly beautiful. I took picture after picture and still couldn't capture the sheer awesomeness of them. First of all, they are vast - you look up (and up and up) and all you can see is the same repeating pattern over and over. In some places you can see where birds nest and the sheer size of the place dwarfs everything in it. You just have to check it out for yourself sometime to see what I'm talking about. 

There is a special little room that contains hundreds of photographs. They show the structures being built step by step. It was truly amazing how that was accomplished. There were two structures originally and they have pictures that show the fire that destoyed the other bunker.

There are pictures of all different people - pilots, nurses, generals, engineers and even dogs. Under each picture there are words that help tell the story of what exactly was going on at the time.

The whole place is very friendly and happy. Each of the planes has their own personality and spunk.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Boomer

"Pleased to meet yuh ma'm"

Sidney

"Oh! I didn't see you standing there!"

Gumby

"Ya'll have a great day now!"

See what I mean? Very nice and friendly.

Then there were a few that were meant to intimidate the enemy like this one. (Owen's favorite)

This one showed how many combat missions it had been on. Every camel equaled 1 mission. This was Mark's favorite. It was tough, he said.

The Air Museum ended up creating great memories for all of us. Check it out sometime if you haven't already!