Wings and Fins

TAKING FLIGHT: On Saturday, we took advantage of the super awesome Smithsonian Magazine free museum pass dealio and went to The Museum of Flight.

It. Was. AWESOME. Seriously, if you live anywhere in or around Seattle, you need to get on down there, and if you don't live close, you need to plan a visit and make sure TMoF is on your To Do list. There's something quite magical about the place. I think I would like to live there.

We saw so many amazing, historic aircraft!

Case in point: Here's the First EVER 747. A pretty big piece of history, I'd say. But doing that even better ...
How about the first Air Force One? Not only could you see the outside, but we got to go inside. It thrilled me to know we were absolutely walking in the footsteps of Kennedy and Khrushchev. Just think, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ all sat in this commander in chief's chair in the conference room on the plane. And below is the AF1 cockpit.
Wish we could have sat in the chairs. :) Here's an on board office. The plane had several phones on board, each carefully labeled regarding whether or not it was a secure line.

This first presidential jet plane, a custom Boeing 707-120, is known as SAM (Special Air Missions) 970. It was delivered in 1959 to replace Eisenhower's Super-Constellation.
We also got to go inside the amazing Concorde jet. Man, was it tight inside. There was a central (narrow!) aisle with just two seats on each side, tight squeeze ocean breeze.Capable of altitude of 55,000 feet and a speed of Mach 2, the one on display in Seattle was the very last Concorde to fly a commercial flight.

The Museum of Flight also has some space age vehicles. For instance, there's a mock up of the International Space Stations' Destiny laboratory. It was designed and built by SPACEHAB Corporation in October 2002. There is also a Boeing Lunar Roving Vehicle. Built in 1971 as an engineering mock-up, we marveled at its wheels, which appeared to be made out of chainmail. The museum has so many breathtakingly beautiful airplanes from the WWI and WWI eras. One of our favorites was this lovely Curtiss JN-D4 Jenny! After WWI, thousands of these were sold as surplus. These biplanes were a big part of the barnstorming era that helped awaken America to civil aviation through much of the 1920s.
And then there's the cool Corsair, with wings that fold up so you could pack 'em in tightly on ships. This particular plane has a remarkable history. Its home was the former Naval Air Station at Sand Point, Seattle, in 1950. It was ditched into Lake Washington following a midair collision. Incredibly, the aircraft was recovered from the lake in 1983 and restored to the mint condition it is today. I could go on and on and on. The whole time we were there, basically Christian and I were just talking about how much we need to come back on another day when we had more time to spend. We're going to have to check out their membership options and see what kind of enrichment/education programs they have there.

AMAZING TALE: This afternoon we went to see "Dolphin Tale," the story of Winter, the tail-less dolphin, in 3D, starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Conick Jr., no less.
A photo of Winter, when we saw her in May of 2010.

We're happy to be able to say we met Winter before she was a Major Motion Picture star. :) When we went to Florida in May of 2010 for the launch of space shuttle Atlantis, driving cross state to see Winter was definitely on our to do list. The kids and I had discovered her via the Scholastic Web site, which held a virtual tour of the Clearwater Aquarium, Winter's home, on Oct. 7, 2009.

We'll never forget our trip to the Clearwater Aquarium, our behind the scenes tour (where our tour guide called Annabelle "the most brilliant 5-year-old I've ever met), and basically having Winter all to ourselves.

Her now very famous prosthetic was on a lawn chair right next to us!

We went back to Winter's Web site this morning and were happy to spot her right away on her Web cam! There's a neat feature on the site that lets you take a snapshot of what you're watching, which is cool. CJ took a few Winter snapshots, including this one:The kids both played Dolphins in Depth, where they learned more about dolphin body part, as well as a couple of other (less educational) games in the Winter Web site's Kid Zone.

Overall, "Dolphin Tale" was a pretty darn good movie. CJ gave it an 8 out of 10 as the credits rolled. I will admit that a tear slipped down my right cheek at the end, when they showed real live (not made for a 3D movie) footage of all of the people missing limbs coming to meet Winter. Another take away from the movie - homeschooling is cool/mainstream. The little girl character in the movie is homeschooled by her Dr. (marine biologist) Dad. That, and the mom of the young boy in the movie comes to realize a conventional education isn't necessarily all that it's cracked up to be.

When we met Winter, as we were standing around her pool, I was looking around for the birds that were making all the noise. I was surprised when the tour guide told us that it was Winter chirping away!