Leilani's school had a field trip to the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinville. We had never been there before, because it is very expensive (at least in my opinion - $25 for adults and $23 for kids). Since her school got a group rate of $8 each, we decided to take the other kids out of school and go as a family (families are welcome to go on almost all of the field trips). We were missing Emily, because she is still on her trip with Grandma and Grandpa Bevans, but the rest of us really enjoyed it!
While we waited for the tour to start, we played in the kids' room. They had planes to sit in,
and planes to ride on. (The kids had fun pushing Robert around, but then they all decided to ride. In the picture below you can see Alan pushing Leilani on a plane down the runway- she is holding Robert - and Elisabeth riding one behind them. Clicking on any picture will bring it up bigger.)
They also had flight simulators. None of us were very good at flying. We crashed over and over!
We started out the tour at a replica of the plane the Wright brothers flew.
The tour guide told us many cool facts and fun stories. He claimed that they often used castor oil on these prop planes, which would blow back on the pilots and cause them to have to go to the bathroom really bad. So, when they landed, they would run from the planes to the porta potties on the edge of the field immediately. He said that is where the term "hit the ground running" came from. I can't find verification of this on google, but it is a good story anyway.
As part of the tour, the kids made gliders out of styrofoam plates and a penny. They had a competition to see whose plane could go the furthest. Leilani came in 2nd the first race, but none of my kids placed the 2nd time. Benjamin kept having his penny come out and go flying, and his plane crash by his feet.
The Spruce Goose is the plane that the museum is famous for. It is a plane made from wood, as the model above shows.
It was hard to get the whole plane in a picture, because it is so big. It is behind us in this picture. We got to go inside the hold, but it costs $50 to go up in the cockpit.
This picture is inside the hold looking back through the plane to the tail. The beach balls are original, still blown up from the original flight (he says they are much better quality than the ones we have now). Apparently they were supposed to help the boat float.
I was finally able to get a picture from the 2nd story walk way. It is quite the plane. Apparently it still holds the record for the longest wingspan (I couldn't get the wings all in the picture). I couldn't believe that it was only flown once for about 45 seconds. A lot of time and money went into that plane!
We saw many other planes, and then we walked over to the space museum, which is in a different building. They had many neat things.
We walked down several flights of stairs under the building to get to the bottom of this rocket.
This is looking up the rocket from the bottom. They had a room you could go in that had the equipment used for launching it, and then you watched a five minute simulation of the actual launch. The kids loved it!
They also had replicas of the equipment used for the first men to get to the moon.
My kids really wanted to ride on the buggy!
After we looked at both museums, the kids wanted to play on the playground. It was of course air and space themed, and really fun!
We all really enjoyed the trip, and I'm glad we were able to go. All of us learned something, and it was neat to see so many historical items close up.
No comments:
Post a Comment