I think James' favorite part of the trip was visiting the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is an annex to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum located out near Dulles Airport. I think he could have spent several days there! The kids thought it was cool, but there is a limit to how much museum time we could subject them to. Some of the highlights are pictured below...***
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| Space Shuttle Enterprise |
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| Enola Gay (dropped "the bomb" on Hiroshima) |
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| SR-71 Blackbird (flies 3 times the speed of sound) |
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| Another view of the Enola Gay from the catwalk - this place is HUGE! |
***Note: Interestingly enough, the same day I made this post I read that yesterday, the Space Shuttle Discovery was powered down for the last time and will replace the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy museum. The Enterprise was only flown within the Earth's atmosphere to test landings, etc. and never actually went into space. The Discovery was in operation for 28 years and flew 39 missions! It will be displayed at Udvar-Hazy in April 2012 and the Enterprise will move to Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in NYC. I know that I and my friends and family in Houston were disappointed to hear that Houston wasn't going to get a shuttle to display! Anyway, we now have another reason to go back someday...to see the Discovery!
Almost forgot...we had some time left after our trip to Udvar-Hazy, so we took the subway over to the Capitol. It was too late in the day for a real tour, but we were allowed in on the last "photo tour" of the day, which basically means you can go to the rotunda real quick and take some pictures. That was fine for our needs, since the kids probably wouldn't have been up for a much longer tour! We were glad to at least be able to go inside.
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| Look at the wonder and joy on his face! ha. |
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