Museum Of Flight

Sherry was at a music conference for most of this weekend, which left Saturday open to find something to do. The Clark Boys are always looking for adventure. During David's parent/teacher conference on Wednesday, I offered to supply his class with jigsaw puzzles that the kids could do on the classroom's computers. We had plenty of train pictures and car pictures at home to use for the puzzles, but not near enough airplane photos. When I told David on Saturday that we needed to get more airplane pictures for his class puzzles he asked, "Can we go see the airplanes in Seattle?" Perfect idea.

After a morning at the Y, we headed to Seattle. Of course, when The Clark Boys are in Seattle, they stop to enjoy trains. And chicken nuggets. And fries. Not necessarily in that order. My sons know their way around SODO better than any other kids younger than seven. After seeing a share of work trains, cabooses, and local freights, we headed King County International Airport and to the Museum Of Flight.

Initially I just wanted to take photos of the planes outside the museum, because it costs me $14 as an adult to walk in the door. But David was insistent and thankfully Jack is free so we headed inside after taking pictures of the big Boeing B47 bomber out front. It's always fun to enter a place that has full-size airplanes hanging from the ceiling, especially historic ones. The Douglas DC-3 is one of them, an airplane I came to know early in my life as the only air transport between Sand Point AK and Anchorage. David rolled Jacks' stroller straight over to the Boeing 737 front fuselage section that acts as a movie theater on the second floor. It was then time to roll Jack over to the section that has examples of actual small home-built airplanes and helicopters that kids can climb into. There are also exhibits on how airplane controls work, and how jet engines make their power. All the while Jack is cruising around, climbing into cockpits and onto chairs. I think this is David's favorite spot, because he sat in most every craft.

The museum also has a control tower exhibit where people can check out equipment and watch planes land or take off. While David wanted to look through the binoculars (that appear to have been removed), Jack loved the phone-style handsets that people use for listening to recordings of traffic control activity. Boeing Field, while not the biggest airport, still gets its fair share of traffic. Heck, it's big enough for 747s to take off. One added benefit of being in the control tower exhibit is being able to watch trains on the BNSF mainline just past the airport runways.

Back downstairs, David pitched and rolled in a kid-sized Blue Angels simulator, and checked out the flying car exhibit (you know...the flying car that we were promised in elementary school as the way we would be getting around in the future). I would say that on the main floor of the museum there were at least 10 nationalities and languages represented during our attendance. Seeing a full-size F4U Corsair or Focke-Wulfe FW190 up close is nothing short of amazing. Both David and Jack took their turns sitting in the cockpit of a sectioned SR71 Blackbird, the world's most famous spy plane.

For me the favorite section of the museum is the Personal Courage exhibit. Growing up I learned a lot from books about World War II and the airplanes flown during the time. Personal Courage has the WWII section downstairs while the WWI section is above it. David wanted to see both so we checked out everything from a P38 Lightning to a German biplane. Even the sounds a vintage airplanes and songs contemporary to the equipment are piped into the exhibit. Where the enormous nature of today's airplanes can overwhelm you, the small and risky stature of WWI aircraft tells you the pilots of these planes were brave people. The one thing I would love to see up close here is a Mitsubishi Zero - a plane that I read about and researched heavily during elementary school - but I'm not sure that will ever happen.

Had we more time, I would have taken the boys across the street to see the Air Force One 707 and the Concorde. David and I walked through those last year. The Museum Of Flight is a great place to visit, especially if a person likes airplanes. I think most can appreciate the sense of history and preservation surrounding this organization, and having it right on an international airfield certainly helps. In closing, click on the picture below to see a slide show from our day:

Enjoy! Kurt