It might not have been hiking, but it was an important time for me, and it was the last field trip I’d take with my youngest child, as he graduated from 8th grade this week. His 8th-grade “big” trip in middle school was to the National Air and Space Museum (Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) in Chantilly, VA.
This is the Smithsonian’s big museum – and the one not in Washington, D.C., meaning getting there is far more enjoyable. You just gotta leave the Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia, go over the Shenandoah River, and up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains….and deal with being around people once again.
I wasn’t complaining, though, as the school splurged on charter buses for a comfy ride.
The museum is free; they just charge you $15 a vehicle to park. Which is fine. In the PNW, you’d get hit with horrendous entrance fees (the Boeing Museum of Flight outside of Seattle is now $21 for youth and $29 per adult!).
Alistaire was really looking forward to it, and we didn’t have enough time to see everything, so we will be going back soon. He really loves history, and its obscure parts. Truth is, our whole family is a bunch of history nerds. Mine is the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Others in the house are WWII buffs and so on. He loves to see things he has read or watched about.
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
Alistaire had wanted to see this forever. It is a massive plane.
Space Shuttle Discovery.
I had a couple of other kids with Alix and me, and I realized that maybe my kids are different from typical students. It was the years of homeschooling and constant field trips. The other students had no idea that two shuttles had been lost – and telling them about Challenger was … interesting. Being an “older” parent, I am sure I was a fountain of ancient knowledge. But for some reason, I could not quit laughing about the “cut here for emergency rescue” because I had never really looked at how shady those tiles were – when you stand close to a shuttle, you realize just how pieced together those ships were. Yeah, I don’t think I would have gotten on one of them, even after I was repeatedly told in school that shuttle flights would be a common, everyday thing. Space tourism! Oh, the 80s were sooo optimistic.
Alix was excited to see one of the “local” planes from our former home, Whidbey Island. The EA-6B Prowler was NAS Whidbey’s plane, and once retired, they took on the Growler. On Hwy 20, one of them sits in a display, the gate guardian. This one, though, is far closer to seeing. The planes on Whidbey were originally displayed at City Beach (Windjammer Park) in Oak Harbor, WA (on the island), till they were moved to NAS Whidbey Gateway Park.
Hey, a fantasy ship! The Concorde is so long that they packed so many planes under it.
Wingless test planes.
When Kirk was around Alistaire’s age, the Enola Gay was brought in for restoration. He got to stand in its cockpit as his father invited him to come see it. Once it got handed off from the Air Force, it took 19 years to fully restore it. It is MASSIVE to stand under.
It was a great trip, but barely any time to look at the planes. This is a museum to fuel the mind – and it needs a full day.
~Sarah