Air and Space Museum

We're so lucky to live 15 minutes from one of the absolute best museums ever - the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  We've been there many times through the years, but each time we see something new.  And as the boys get older, they appreciate it more as well. 

This past Sunday we needed to get out of the house for a few hours, and it was too chilly to be outside for long.  So we headed to Udvar and with great timing, stumbled upon a free guided tour with the most amazing tour guide.  I don't remember his last name, but Steve was his first name and he was so full of information and fascinating stories, he held our attention for almost two full hours. Great guy!  The museum has tons of docents who volunteer their time touring people around, many of them are veterans and have served in the military themselves.

We  hadn't seen the Space Shuttle Discovery since it arrived on top of an airplane this past spring.  Logan and I were lucky that day in April to be driving near the museum and saw the amazing sight of Discovery attached to the top of an airplane as it was flown into the Udvar Hazy museum for retirement.  You just can't believe how massive it is in person, and its just amazing it was attached to top of an airplane...how heavy that must have been!  You can see how they attached it here.

 

 

We brought along Midnight, the 1st grade mascot from Logan's class.  Logan kept a journal all weekend to share with his class about all the adventures we had with Midnight last weekend.

 

 

 

These are so big, I bet an Andrew and a half could stand up inside them.

 

 

 

Udvar Hazy also houses the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used to drop the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

 

 

Also, since the museum sits adjacent to Dulles Airport, you can ride the elevator up and get a 360 degree view of the planes taking off and landing.  Midnight thought it was cool too.