It was a short, two-hour drive to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum which allows free RV parking for up to two nights. They asked us to park at the back of the lot. There were some school buses doing some training in the lot. But it’s a pretty big lot.
We had stopped here before with the Ural and it was around 100°F. Today, it’s a very comfortable 70°F. The displays have changed some since 2015 but the major pieces such as the Spruce Goose and the SR-71 are the same. The two Urals that were part of a WWII display are gone as is the WWII display.
There are three large buildings that are part of the museum plus a fourth building with an indoor water park. One of the buildings has an IMAX theatre and I watched
Fighter Pilot. A movie about fighter pilot training at Nellis AFB.
This is the Spruce Goose. An wooden, amphibious plane made by Howard Hughes and only made one short flight. It used to be in Long Beach next to the Queen Mary but was disassembled and moved here. Some of the original craftsmen that originally built the plane participated in its reassembly.
The space museum not only had spacecraft and rocket engines but also some planes that were part of the space program such as this engineering model of the X-15, a supersonic experimental plane. It’s on the “space” side as the X-15 altitude record is 354,200 ft which is considered as space.
Both sides of the museum were very well done though admission is kind of steep at $27. There is no requirement to purchase admission in exchange for the free RV parking but I was looking forward to visiting here again.
This is the SR-71. The supersonic spy plane. I saw one on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base where it was being refueled between missions. This was back in the mid-70s when it was still being used. We were told that it used so much fuel getting off the ground that it needed to be refueled soon after takeoff. It has two J58 turbojet engines each generating 32,500 lbs of thrust burning 8,000 gallons of fuel per hour.
BTW, used the Instant Pot to make brown rice (22 min) and the induction burner for salmon in garlic and brown butter. Used only 4% of the batteries.
I've only been to Evergreen once but loved wandering around and taking pictures. We were lucky to have a 2 for 1 Groupon at the time. Admission is spendy but they have so many neat planes and such on display.
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