Museum of Flight

This girl is some kind of nuts about airplanes. She'd been down by Boeing Field a couple of times this week with B and was begging to go see the airplanes in the museum. We tried to stress that she could look at them, but she wouldn't be able to ride in them and they sure weren't going to take her anywhere. She assured us that looking and touching was all she wanted to do. Okay, we'll work on the touching later; and off we went to the Museum of Flight. After two ventures over the barriers and the sirens announcing her presence, she learned about the touching part. They do a great job at MOF - highly recommend it - and they do have a couple of fun parts you can touch and climb on/in. Katie even flew a mini Blue Angel jet all by herself (well, technically she sat in it staring at her feet with her finger on her chin, but she did it all by herself. The ride docent had to steer the plane for her by moving the flaps, but she enjoyed it).

I'm going to get in trouble for not knowing what planes these are but here's a couple of "climb in and touch" pictures:


Plane #1 - The "This looked more fun when I was watching the other kids do it" plane:



Plane #2 - The "this is so much more fun when Daddy does it with me" plane:


And, now after this visit we have to add astronaut to Katie's desired careers. So that makes it the "naked, singing, vetrinarian astronaut" who's also a puppy and Cinderella.


We toured through the Concord (sure would have like to ride on that before it retired) and one of the Air Force One planes that served JFK, LBJ, and Nixon. Way cool. These icons of history sat, touched, ate, walked, lived on this plane. I'm not one to buy into celebrity often, but that was really a neat thing to see. And, what a snapshot of life. The 'secretary' station equipped with a typewriter. The communication station did appear to have a very early computer. And two safes where THE CODES were kept when the president was on board. Wow. Worth the price of admission for sure.


And check out this phone. It's strange to think that Katie will never experience a rotary phone. Or a time before cell phones, iPods, DVDs, the internet, color television, ...


Fine! Butch says I need to properly label the planes above. The first one is the F-18 Hornet and the second is a SR-71 Blackbird, or as I still like to call them "the white one" and the "black one"!