An Historical Outing

My family was able to go on a short little vacation down near D.C. while my husband was doing some training for work. It's amazing how many things there are to do within a 30 minute radius over by Dulles Airport! We took two trips to the National Air & Space Museum next to the airport - once with just me and the kids, and once with my husband after he got off work.

I'm not really into airplanes, but I am interested in technology and history geeky stuff, so there was plenty for all of us to enjoy. Here are a few things that caught my eye:

Dual prop plane to solve the problem of using a machine gun during WWI.

I'm not that interested in guns, but this machine gun is retro cool. 

The Enola Gay.
This one gave me chills because I actually remembered this plane.
It dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during WWII.
Whoa.

Things from Charles & Anne Lindburgh's exploratory flights.

Had to get a shot of their awesome rations!

Another chill factor - flight gloves signed by Amelia Earhart!

I absolutely adored these sweet space toys!

Original Star Trek communicators - awesome.

Space Barbies?! Hahaha! Too bad they don't make these anymore.
Finally! An intelligent career for Barbie!

The most awesome robots ever.

The model of the Mother Ship used in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
The makers put in all sorts of fun things you don't see in the movie...

... including R2D2...

... and a cemetery! hahaha!

And one of the coolest things we saw - the Discovery Space Shuttle

A preservationist hard at work

I was also fascinated with the Restoration wing which was a gigantic room devoted to restoring and preserving the aircraft in their collections. You could watch the preservationists hard at work from a huge, long window. What a fun job that would be!