After a gruelling Halloween which saw 158 trick or treaters knock on my cousin Pat's door, Saturday morning we headed down to McMinnville to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum to see the
Spruce Goose. I've been wanting to do this for a while and am glad I finally got the chance. The Goose is enormous, and getting the opportunity to pilot it was pretty damn cool. Here Pat is my co-pilot and cousin Wayne was the stewardess on this mission. Yes, I am actually sitting in the same seat Howard Hughes was in when he piloted the biggest plane ever built on it's famed one mile flight off the shore of Long Beach, California. It really is too bad that it never flew again.
It's kind of hard to get a good feel for the size of it from pictures, particularly from pictures taken by a camera phone since I forgot to bring my real camera with me, but here is a fighter jet and another plane that I can't tell what it is parked under one of the wings.
To give you a little better idea of the size, here is a better picture shamelessly stolen from the internet. And just for fun,
one more with the SR-71 nicely nestled under it's wing like an ugly duckling. And I don't know why having multiple pictures plays havoc with my formatting, but I'm too tired to worry about it now.
The Goose wasn't the only interesting attraction there though. In addition to a variety of other planes ranging from a Sopwith Camel to an F-15, they also had an impressive space exhibit. Here is a
Titan II missile which space buffs may remember propelled the astronauts of the Gemini program into orbit.
And here is one of the rocket boosters from the Titan II.
A cute little unmanned Russian lunar rover.
And the NASA LEM, or lunar excursion module for those of you who haven't seen Apollo 13. Note, this is a replica, not the actual one that landed on the moon. Also note, that is a replica astronaut, not an actual one.
Here we have the much cooler manned lunar rover, brought to you by your friends at NASA.
And finally, the super cool SR-71. Fastest plane in the world. This thing had some unbelievable huge engines, and the thought of taking a spin in this bad boy makes me salivate. But alas, that wasn't inclued in the price of admission, nor was it an optional upgrade. I'm afraid my dream will have to remain just that. And so, if you find yourself with some free time and have already seen High School Musical 3, then do yourself a favor and get down to Oregon to see this museum. It's worth it.
It's kind of hard to get a good feel for the size of it from pictures, particularly from pictures taken by a camera phone since I forgot to bring my real camera with me, but here is a fighter jet and another plane that I can't tell what it is parked under one of the wings.
The Goose wasn't the only interesting attraction there though. In addition to a variety of other planes ranging from a Sopwith Camel to an F-15, they also had an impressive space exhibit. Here is a Titan II missile which space buffs may remember propelled the astronauts of the Gemini program into orbit.
And here is one of the rocket boosters from the Titan II.
A cute little unmanned Russian lunar rover.
And the NASA LEM, or lunar excursion module for those of you who haven't seen Apollo 13. Note, this is a replica, not the actual one that landed on the moon. Also note, that is a replica astronaut, not an actual one.
Here we have the much cooler manned lunar rover, brought to you by your friends at NASA.
And finally, the super cool SR-71. Fastest plane in the world. This thing had some unbelievable huge engines, and the thought of taking a spin in this bad boy makes me salivate. But alas, that wasn't inclued in the price of admission, nor was it an optional upgrade. I'm afraid my dream will have to remain just that. And so, if you find yourself with some free time and have already seen High School Musical 3, then do yourself a favor and get down to Oregon to see this museum. It's worth it.
4 comments:
I had the pleasure of escorting the Spruce Goose on its historic maiden flight during.
So it was only a mission in the largely forgotten game Crimson Skies, but it was fun.
That is so weird. I grew up near Long Beach, California and was on the Spruce Goose myself down there. It was actually floating in water in the dock where the Queen Mary is, and to see it up and on dry land is just eerie for me. OH, and yeah, you know the plane is haunted, right? ;-)
That's pretty cool, I would have liked to have seen it in the water. And no, I didn't know it was haunted. I didn't see any ghosts when I was there, who's supposed to be haunting it, Howard Hughes?
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