During spring break, which was also a vacation week for me, my daughter and I took a trip to Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Or. This is the home of Howard Hughes’ famous Spruce Goose, a very large airplane. I mean this thing is huge, taking up nearly the length of the building and the height. Granted the building was built for the plane, but still. The behemoth is surrounded by all kinds of static display helicopters, jets, and planes from da Vinci, Wright Bros, WWI, WWII, and all the W’s after that.
The drive up was nice and there was hope that it wasn’t going to rain but that luck ran out soon after we arrived at the museum. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the static displays outside the facility. We’ll have to hit those on a dryer day.
Evergreen has also added a space museum. There’s a lot of spacey, rocketry kinds of displays there and I guess somehow they plan to get a space shuttle in there. At least it is on the map labeled “coming soon”. It’s set up in a war-to-space kind of evolution with some v-1 and v-2 rockets on display and some other military rockets/missiles. I was impressed most by the Titan II rocket in it’s own display silo with a control room. It was ever so geeky nerdy cold war era awesome. But the only thing the missile really reminded me of was that planet of the apes where all the underground humans worshipped that big atomic rocket. Creepy.
The part of the complex is rather new so I see them getting more and more exhibits. They have a really nice lunar lander/rover display a helicopter hanging from the ceiling with a burnt-up capsule hanging under that, all very cool. Also housed here are the X-15 and SR-71 planes. A couple of my favorite planes in history just from the manly speed they pushed.
Speaking of space Addie and I caught an Imax 3D move about the space telescope “Hubble 3D” there also. Yes, they even have their own Imax Theater. The movie was very good and the stars looked as they were dumping right into your lap. I recommend it to anyone.
My favorite parts of the movie are when the astronauts had to fix and/or install components on Hubble. I reminded me a lot of when I had to install a new faucet, with my arms all cramped up, going places they really can’t fit, holding tools that I really couldn’t get a real good grip on. Ahh, good times.
Even though it rained most of the day, and was more expensive (especially after lunch and the gift shop) than I had planned, we had a great time.
You can find more pictures of the trip over on my flickr page, in this set: Evergreen Aviation 2010 (be sure to look there to discover the new attraction to be built. hint: water feature)Links:
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