The Udvar-Hazy Museum that is. The Air and Space Museum in
Washington, DC wanted to expand their collection and years ago they added the
Udvar Hazy Museum near Dulles airport for the majority of their planes.
Some friends from Beaver are posted here for training too
and we met them at the museum. It was fun to have a bit of home, away from
home. Their kids are older too and watching them soak in the education and
sites was totally worth it. The museum has a space suit for kids to touch and
learn about and there are educational games all over. You can try and land a
simulated space pod with a joist stick or test your knowledge on the order of
the planets in our galaxy.
This museum, named after the man that donated the money to
build it, is a massive airplane hangar that houses, according to their website,
60,000 pieces. Many of them are planes. Some of these planes include iconic and
historical planes throughout history. From the celebrated Stealth Fighter and
its sleek black wings and the Enola Gay that dropped atomic bombs to the
enormous Discovery Shuttle that dominates on entire wing of the museum.
As we saw hundreds of planes—war planes, prototype planes,
helicopters, planes that doubled as cars—I couldn’t help think that flying is
such a part of our era I cannot imagine only a few years prior only the
military had planes and before the Wright Brother’s Kittyhawk there were only
birds in the sky. What was life like? The world must have been so dauntingly
huge. I guess that is similar to our
children growing up thinking “People didn’t ALWAYS have cell phones? What was
the world like?” haha.
Speaking of cell phones, I am glad that took mine. As Lady
and I perused the area and we had more questions about a certain artifact or plane
we would just Google the answers. For example, when we were staring up at the
big space shuttle that carried several missions to space, we found out what the
black tiles along the bottom of the shuttle were made of (quartz sand) and that
there are more than 23,000 of them! Can you imagine trying to piece all of them
together?
It was a great day. Always nice to have some history and
science on a day trip!
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| This is how Lucky enjoyed the trip |
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| He is getting so big! (and handsome) |
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| Seriously reading how Christmas is about Jesus...not the presents |
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