Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Virginia

After leaving Gettysburg, we had one more stop on the way to our hotel. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum is so large, it has two venues. The first, and original, is in Washington DC and the second is in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia which opened in 2003. A bit of a mouthful, but Steven F. Udvar-Hazy did donate $65 million to build this place so I'll let him off!

Anyhow because this is situated outside of Washington DC, and we were passing by on the way in, it made sense to visit today.

We started with going up the Observation Tower first, it wasn't the best day for it as the planes were landing at the wrong end of the runway at nearby Dulles Airport, but the view around the area was pretty nice.



The major drawcard here is the Space Shuttle Discovery. We've visited many air museums before and know what to expect. Usually planes look used and there are signs of wear and tear, but they generally seem very well cared for. Discovery was something else.

The tiled area underneath shows up the battle scars of many a landing. The heat marks are very evident and do show a pattern of heat flow. The white section of the shuttle, I expected to be nice shiny painted surfaces like most planes. In fact, it is a patchwork of fabric sections, very rough and also very dirty. We found this display very impressive, most authentic, and a tribute to this workhorse that it successfully completed 39 missions.

Dad had never seen a SR-71 Blackbird in the flesh before so this was his chance. Helen and I have seen many before, at least 4 now, however this one is in very good condition. When this plane was retired, it was flown from Los Angeles to Washington DC, distance 3,701.0 km, average speed 3,451.7 km/h, and an elapsed time of 64 minutes 20 seconds. Once it arrived there, it was prepared for the museum display. What a way to go out!!!!!

The Enola Gay is also on display here. A Boeing B-29 Superfortress, its claim to fame being it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Of course there is so much more to see and it would take all day to describe it everything we saw. Overall an amazing place and we spent a few hours in here. We left just before throwing out time.

The drive to our hotel in Arlington was slow, as we were heading in during peak hour traffic. We made it in one piece. Arriving was fun, we parked outside the hotel and next thing, we were parked in by paramedics and fire appliances responding to an emergency. Eventually we were freed and able to park the car.