Dec 3
Dec 4
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Dec 6
Dec 7
We had breakfast at the motel, checked email, then drove over to Kelly’s where we played with her cats while she finished a couple of small chores. Then it was time to play!
We drove west to a place called Fantasy of Flight. It’s an aircraft museum with a bunch of restored aircraft from many different time periods. Everything from old barnstormers to modern craft. Most have been restored to airworthiness. The owner is one of the Heinz heirs, so he can afford all the toys!
We spent most of the day here, wandering through the interactive exhibits and the two public hangers. Lunch was on premises at a café called the Compass Rose, which is done up like a 50's diner. Good food!
The photo on the left shows the autographed side of an airplane. This particular plane was used to drop many of the high speed planes used in speed experiments in the 1950, including several which broke mach 2. the main autograph here is the pilot who first broke mach 2. The autograph above and to the left of this is by Paul Tibbets who flew the Enola Gay, which dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
The photo on the right above shows some of the planes in one of the hangers. This one is the Spirit of Igor, a Sikorsky S-39C which sports a custom paint job. To produce this pattern, a photo of a giraffe's skin was projected onto the plane and copied.
The photo on the left shows another view of one of the public hangers and features the Gee Bee airplane which was built as a racer in the 1930s. It's mostly engine...
The photo on the right is a replica of the Red Baron's Fokker from World War I. The original didn't survive the war, but the plane is so famous that many replicas have been built over the years.
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Early in the afternoon, they had a demonstration of a biplane, a Norde Stampe, which is a French biplane from World War I. The pilot had it performing some pretty impressive aerobatics for the audience. The photo on the left above shows the plane getting ready for takeoff. The center photo shows it in midair. The photo on the right shows it making a low pass over the runway.
And we took a tour of the hangers that aren’t accessible to the public. Most have plane parts stored in them. One is a working hanger were the planes are worked on. The photo on the left shows a view of this hanger. The plane on the left (with the red nose) is painted to mimic the Ina Macon Belle, which was flown in World War II by one of the Tuskegee Airmen.
I think we just about shut the place down for the day! It was a fun day.
Then we drove back to town, intending to have a Bottington’s (a very good English pub beer) at the Cricketer Arms, where we’ve gotten them before. They no longer carry it on tap, however, and it just isn’t as good out of a can!!! So we walked out!
Kelly was looking for a swimsuit to do laps in, so we wandered around the nearby Ron Jon’s shop for a while. All they had were “pretty” suits, not ones that were suitable for actually swimming in, so we left.
Dinner tonight was at our regular Sweet Tomatoes. I’ve gotten used to the one near our house, however, and missed having regular teaspoons available at the register with the rest of the silverware, missed the basket of fresh chocolate chip cookies, and really didn’t like having to stand on my tiptoes to reach the teabags!!! Ours seems more user friendly...
After dinner, it was back to Kelly’s where she made us some alcoholic butter beers. One of her friends had done some experimenting to come up with the recipe. They sounded terrible, but were quite tasty. And we had our annual Rummitiles game. Kelly won, of course.
We cut the evening a bit short since we’d had a full day and Kelly has a session with the gym trainer first thing tomorrow morning, so she needs to get up a bit earlier than usual. We drove back to the motel and quickly fell asleep.