Washington DC, Day-3

Day-3 of our visit to DC started with another train trip to downtown, a short walk to the Museum of Air & Space, only to find a 1-1/2 hour line of bus loads of people waiting to go through bag check and body scan. We really wanted to see this (well, I did) so we jumped in.

Once inside, we found most of the exhibits were still closed due to a massive remodel in progress, and crowds of school kids and adults in line to get into the high school project-like exhibits ... disappointing. We spent a half-hour looking around and left, deciding to head to the "other" Air & Space Museum at Washington-Dulles airport, about 45 minutes drive. We should have gone there first!

This is one of the "must see" museums in the Country, especially if you are an airplane enthusiast. I won't post all the 50 pictures I took here, but a short list of the aircraft and aircraft-related items on view follow: 

• space ship Discovery (the tail easily 5-stories high)
• Mars Pathfinder Lander and exploration robots
• Concorde (yes, the 1,341 mph airliner)
• Enola Gay (the bomber that dropped the big one on Japan)
• Russian MiG 21F and many other foreign fighters and bombers
• the SR-71 speed record holder
• several other airliners
• Predator drone (w/missiles)

Keep in mind these were all displayed in-doors (big hanger), either hanging from the ceiling or available from ground-level or a 3-story walkway around the perimeter. So incredible! A few pix follow (open and zoom-in on the layout for details in the main hanger):

A row of exotic engines on display above ... One of the most interesting parts of the exhibit was the Restoration Shop, so organized and clean you could eat off the floor. Oh, and if you look way back against the hanger door on the left side, you'll find a Star Wars X-Wing fighter being restored. Wow!

A few more pix, then we are loading up headed for the next adventure, somewhere North of DC. Yes, those would be machine guns used in different airplanes through history; the case behind me is only half of that exhibit.

One more for you gear-heads out there ... a Pratt & Whitney R-4360, 28-cylinders arranged in a spiral design, 3,000 hp, radial engine cut-away. Who engineered these things?

Off to the next adventure ...