May 2   Back to Oregon

Low clouds and 44 degrees this morning.  We had breakfast, then took Rte 503 through Battle Ground, to Vancouver, Washington. Nice country road with cattle, sheep, horses, goats, fields of vineyards and berries.

 There are still mountains, but larger valleys with more flat spots.

Greg spots an LA Fitness in Vancouver, so we stop there instead of going into Portland.  Nice but busy facility.  We worked out and then took nice long showers.  Though we have been walking a lot, we could tell that we haven’t been doing our regular upper body work!

We crossed the Columbia River into Oregon again, through Portland and to the town of McMinnville where, on my brother John’s recommendation, we arrived at Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.  Quite a huge facility with three major buildings.  The first one housed Howard Hughes’ huge Spruce Goose airplane and a large collection of pre-WWII airplanes.  Replicas of the Wright Brothers’ Flyer,

the Curtis Jenny from early WWI.  There was a surplus of these planes (and pilots) after the war, which led to the hayday of barnstorming and introduced much of America to air travel.

The Spruce Goose was built during the buildup to WWII and so, was built mainly from Birch. But it took years  (5) to complete and  It was flown once by Howard Hughes November 2, 1947. With a wingspan as long as a football field and  tail as tall as an 8 story building, it was a monster compared to any contemporary planes and remains one of the largest ever constructed.

Many interesting planes  developed as aviation grew by leaps and bounds and many experimental planes were homemade. 

Seabee Experimental

Gyrox - plans in the works to fly it across the Atlantic!

The DC3 was the first widely used commercial plane and many planes were developed for the military like the B-17 Flying Fortress and the Flying Tiger Curtis P-40N. There were also planes from Germany, Canada, England and others on display.

The second building contained an IMAX theatre where we watched a film called Living in the Age of Airplanes, which was done by National Geographic with their usual excellent photography and history. Today over 100,000 planes take off or land in the US each day.  And travel has become widespread even to places like the South Pole.  Air freight has made the world small as well - they used the example of flowers, cut in places like Ecuador and Kenya and delivered for sale to Amsterdam and 60 other countries within 3 days.

The third building contained planes and helicopters from WWII on, as well as quite a lot of information on NASA and the space program, as well as the Soviet program and models of rockets, capsules, Skylab, etc. 

 I didn't realize that helicopters have gotten so huge!

US Spitfire

All in all, this was a fantastic collection. We just ran out of steam part way through the third building.  There were also many planes on display on their extensive grounds.

We got back on 99S instead of getting on the expressway,  and passed lots of farms, a few small towns, grass fields, hazelnut and chestnut farms, and many many sheep.  Saw a ring-necked pheasant crossing the road which I haven’t seen since childhood.

The Walmart in Rosenburg didn’t encourage overnight stays, so we ask at a nearby Lowe’s and were told we could park there. Quiet night, we had tacos and beans for dinner.