Unfortunately the hotel didn't have a Breakfast included, fortunately there was a Bob Evans right next door.
Today was a day it was important to get away in good time. We were going to the Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio. The one area of the museum I had never been to was the Presidential and Experimental Aircraft hangers. This is a special area in a different part of the base. It requires registering early, because they only take a very few people over there in a day.
On the drive over to the museum one funny thing caught my eye. I wish I got a picture of it. My friends and I always joke about how every thing in the U.S. has corn syrup in it. I swear it's even in the ingredient lists of things like tooth paste and asphalt. Not really but when you start reading ingredient lists on packages it starts becoming surprising when something doesn't have it.
Anyway on the drive over to the museum we saw this massive chemical plant. It looked like it was right out of Steampunk. There were pipes running everywhere and steam was billowing out of everything. I joked to my dad, it's probably makes corn syrup. Sure enough as we passed the main entrance, it was a corn syrup plant.
We got to the National Museum of the USAF just after opening at 9:00 pm, and bee lined it for the registration desk for the Presidential and Experimental tour. We got there just in time to get on the first trip of the day. Good thing too. I thought they just shuttled people over and back every hour or so, but instead they drive you over wait, then bring you back. This means the next opportunity to get over there wasn't until 12:00 pm or so. This would have been impossible with our travel plans.
Here are some pictures from the presidential hanger. From an aircraft point of view, it's the older planes that grab my interest. Beyond that the idea of standing in an aircraft that one or more famous presidents had spend a great deal of time was kind of impressive. Especially when you realize how small and how slow the early aircraft really were.
Unfortunately the hanger is so tightly packed it is next to impossible to get a decent picture of any of the aircraft. The experimental aircraft hanger was equally as densely packed.
These pictures are of the YF-12A. It was to be an interceptor fighter but never made it into operational service. It's more familiar counter part the SR-71 Blackbird was developed on the same basic airframe. I've seen many SR-71s. The main museum has one, I've seen one on the deck of the Intrepid in New York and in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington. It's interesting to look at this aircraft to see the similarities and differences. The biggest difference is there is a fold down tail fin at the rear. There are a lot of other more subtle differences like the shape of the chines around the nose.
The pictures below are of one of my favorite aircraft. The XB-70 Valkyrie. This is one big airplane. It stretches from one end of the hanger to the other. It's so tall there are many other aircraft parked underneath it. It's to the bomber what the SR-71 is to reconnaissance planes. It's got a lot of really funky innovations in aerodynamics. Plus I just love the look of it.
Next we have the XF-85 Goblin one of the strangest looking aircraft I've ever seen. It was designed to be carried on board a bomber to be used as an escort fighter when over enemy territory.
Finally it's the Tacit Blue. OK the Goblin was strange looking but this thing just looks like a bus that had wings stuck on it. I've seen it many times at the Museum. It used to be housed back in the main museum. Every time I see it I just have to stand back and say what hell?
Finally a picture from the main museum. This is actually a rather creepy aircraft in my opinion. It's of Boxcar the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. There are a lot of military aircraft that have killed a lot of people, but this one and the Enola Gay ushered in a new era of human destruction.
So after our tour of the Presidential and Experimental aircraft, we did a quick tour of the main museum. It was all pretty much what I had seen in my several other trips to the museum. We left the museum shortly after noon and had Lunch at a Wendy's near by.
One thing I wanted to get was a cell phone. I figured it would be good insurance during our drive, and I might find it handy around town. So we found a local mall and found a T-Mobil store. The choice was simple, I knew someone that had gotten one there and they liked it. beyond that I didn't want to spend the time to do more research. So I picked up the cheapest phone, with a 1000 minutes prepaid time which is good for a year. Unlike Canada, cell phones and plans aren't all that expensive in the U.S.
From here we drove on to Cave City in Kentucky for the night. We stayed at the worst hotel of the trip that night. It was a Knights Inn. It wasn't really bad, but it wasn't very nice either. The included breakfast was weak as well. But that's part of the next day.
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