Adventure Through Air and Space, The Evergreen Way

Sunday we met up with several others from the Mulino OPA for breakfast in Newberg at Finnigan's (spinach, mushroom, bacon, Swiss, and avocado omelet... very good)

After breakfast and hanger talk, we left as a group for the Evergreen Aviation and Space museum in McMinnville - http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/

The museum is divided into two buildings (four if you include the water park and IMAX theater).

One building covers space exploration from the earliest rockets, through the international space station, plus modern military aircraft.

Audrey was very excited to get a close up look at a real SR71.

The other building houses the centerpiece of the museum, the HK-1 Spruce Goose, so large it's hard to get a clear idea of it's size inside the building. Around and under the massive wings and tail of the Spruce Goose is a large collection of aircraft spanning very early aviation, military, commercial, and general aviation.

We had a tour guide for this portion of the museum that provided additional insight into the aircraft and displays. Turns out that our guide was assigned to Marine One during the Reagan administration.

Best part of the museum? Sitting under the museum's B17 was Bill, who at the age of 20, had completed 30 combat missions over Germany and occupied France as the pilot of a Flying Fortress. Over 300 hrs of combat flight time, Bill spoke in a quite voice of his first mission, the only from which he returned with no damage, the following missions, his crew, his best mission (the last), and the B17 itself. Bill thought it was a wonderful flying aircraft. Bill also shared some of his more humorous experiences training pilots back home for the remainder of the war in the AT-6 Texan. I could have spent the remainder of the day with Bill, but our tour moved on, and left with deep gratitude to a man that fought in a war a quarter century before I was born.





After 5 hours, and more than one previous visit, there was still more to see. Fortunately we opted for a membership this time.