a guy and a bee

yesterday, bee and i took a trip to the air and space museum, the udvar-hazy air and space museum. bee had never been to this one but she’s always loved the main museum downtown. now that one is her second favorite, haha. if you haven’t been, it’s out by dulles airport and holds tons of different airplanes as well as the enterprise space shuttle (s00n to be replaced by the discovery). if you have been to the other museum, you will know that it has more of the history of planes and aviation where as the udvar hazy museum has lots of planes, many of them military and/or donated by companies or private collectors.

we arrived around noon and started with the space shuttle. they have a separate whole hanger/wing for the the shuttle and lots of the other different NASA paraphernalia as well as the history of space flight and rockets. if you haven’t been to a shuttle launch or seen a shuttle in person, the sheer size of it is incredible. to think they were all built in the ’60s and have flown for years as technology has grown leaps and bounds is amazing. as a child after a trip to key west, we stumbled upon a shuttle launch on the way back and stayed an extra day so we could see. what an incredible experience to see it lift off and take that crazy adventure. anyway, from the picture to the left, you can see the scale of the enterprise and the building itself.

after we wandered around the space shuttle and the different NASA items, we moved through the main portion of the building. when you enter the main part of the facility, you come across an SR-71 blackbird. at over 100 feet long of stealth technology, it’s a sight to see. from there there are lots of war planes and civil aviation items. a whole section of stunt planes and different planes from the early decades of aviation hang from the ceiling. a supersonic, concorde from air france spans across what felt like half of the floor. on the other side there are planes from WWII, both US and German, as well as an F-15 Tomcat and JSF X35B and many more. there was a speech taking place from several members of the tuskegee airmen as part of a black history month celebration. we took a lot of photos of different propellers and hope to do some sort of photo display of them. we did not get a chance to go up in the observation tower because the line was pretty long and decided not to wait as i am sure we will be back. it does cost $15 to park, but to enter the museum it’s free, so there’s that.

we took lots more photos and posted some of them on my flickr page here.

after the museum, we went over to the outlets in leesburg and did a little shopping. we bought some new beach towels, which was entertaining because at one point there were flurries coming down. afterwards, we met a couple of our good friends and fellow elon alumni who live down that way for dinner at dogfish alehouse. after a whole day of hanging out and relaxing, we got home and passed out. surprisingly, bee didn’t even fall asleep on the way home in the car.