Museum of Flight

Pretty much every evening I ask Wyatt to tell me about the favorite part of his day.  He usually tells me it was the part where we went to the Museum of Flight. Except, most days we don't go to the Museum of Flight.  Earlier this month, however, our friends Michelle, Tuffer, and Sabine took us along as their guests to explore the museum.  We had a super fun time "checking everything out," as Wyatt likes to say.  And it left quite an impression.

My last visit to the museum had been in 2000, and as you can imagine a lot has changed.  Most notably, the museum has acquired the now-retired Space Shuttle Trainer that astronauts used to train for shuttle missions.  It's an impressive exhibit.  I learned a lot about the space program too.  But I must admit, I came away wondering who is going to service the Hubble telescope now that the space shuttle program is over.

Wyatt spent most of his time in the shuttle cockpit simulator repeatedly crashing instead of landing.  That and hugging Sabine and falling over.

The rest of the museum had plenty to offer too.  We learned about the moon landings and spent a fair amount of time trying figure out how the lunar rover folded up small enough to pack into the lunar lander.  We were perplexed for a while over whether pluto was a planet or a planetoid.  The NASA exhibit wasn't so helpful on that point.

Wyatt and Byron co-piloted a fighter jet.  Sabine and Wyatt spent a fair amount of time taking turns talking to air traffic control, or at least the recording of air traffic control.  In addition to the exhibits, Wyatt managed to locate and identify most parts of the fire suppression system in the museum -- sprinklers, fire extinguishers, alarms, and emergency exits.  He's a bit of a safety nut.

We took elevators, sat in simulators, boarded aircraft, and ran around a lot.  I think the day was the highlight of Wyatt's month.  Pretty high on my list too.