Tag Archives: Air Museum

My 2016 Dawn Patrol Rendezvous Trip~Part 4

25 Jan

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Day 4 (Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016)
I was up early today in order to make the drive to the National Museum of the USAF here in Dayton, Ohio. I knew I was going to spend a lot of time at this museum today, and because of that, I wanted to be one of the first to get one of the many electric carts they provide for visitors with bad knees like mine.

 

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I believe this is the largest military aviation museum in the world, with 360+ aircraft, and is laid out (mostly) chronologically in four huge hangers. All of the aircraft in this museum have been beautifully restored, and displayed, in such a manner to allow photographs to be taken from the best possible angles. In the first Hanger, are aircraft examples from the beginning of American aviation history, through those used during World War I (The Early Years Gallery).

 

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 The Early Years Gallery

 

And then, there are the huge variety of aircraft used by the USAF during the WW II years, which are displayed in the (World War II Gallery).

 

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World War II Gallery

 

The second Hanger, consists of aircraft used by the USAF during the Korean War, and are located in the (Korean War Gallery).

 

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Korean War Gallery

 

The aircraft used by the USAF during the Vietnam War era, are also located the second hanger, in the (Southeast Asia War Gallery).

 

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Southeast Asia War Gallery

 

The third Hanger houses a large variety of aircraft used by the USAF during the Cold War era, and are located in the (Cold War Gallery). Also located in the third Hanger are many of the modern aircraft being used by the USAF as part of their current operations.

 

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Cold War Gallery

 

The third and fourth Hangers are separated by the (Missile Gallery), which displays many of the USAF offensive and defensive rockets and missiles which have been developed and deployed over the years.

 

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Missile Gallery

 

The huge new fourth Hanger houses aircraft used by past U.S. Presidents while in office, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and are located in the (Presidential Gallery).

 

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Presidential Gallery

 

The many different types of aircraft used by the USAF Airlift Command, to move personnel and equipment where needed around the world, are located in the (Global Reach Gallery) of the fourth Hanger.

 

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Global Reach Gallery

 

There is a Space Shuttle Exhibit, including the CCT-1 Crew Compartment Trainer, various satellites, and a Titan IVB Rocket located in the (Space Gallery) section of the fourth Hanger.

 

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Space Gallery

 

The museum’s largest aircraft, the XB-70, and other aerospace related vehicles that the USAF has sponsored, for research and development projects, over the years are located in the (Research & Development Gallery) of the fourth Hanger.

 

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Research & Development Gallery

 

The majority of these aircraft had been on display somewhere in one of the three hangers, or outside, the first time I visited the USAF museum in 2009. With the opening of the new fourth hanger in 2016, many had been rearranged or relocated to new areas within the four hangers. As a result, it did not take me as long to go through, and view all the aircraft in the four hangers, as I had originally expected. It still took most of the day to see everything.

 

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Since many of the Wright Brothers aviation historical points of interest here in Dayton are close together, I spent the rest of the afternoon visiting as many of those locations as time allowed. These short visits to many of the sites on the “Aviation Trail” included stops at the Dayton Aviation Heritage Historical Park, the Huffman Prairie Flying Field, the Wright Brothers Aviation Center, and the Aviation Trail Museum. Stay tuned for details about these visits in tomorrow’s blog.

 

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On the way back to the motel I stopped in Englewood, Ohio for a delicious meal at the Cazadores Mexican Food Cantina. Their EL Morro Special, consisted of grilled chicken strips cooked with pineapple and Mexican pork sausage, topped with shredded cheese and fresh green onions, served over a flower tortilla. I had a small side salad with guacamole and sour cream. The combination made for an outstanding meal. Then I topped it off with a dish of Mexican Flan for dessert.

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

 

 

 

 

 

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My 2016 Dawn Patrol Rendezvous Trip Part 3

18 Jan

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

 

Day 3 (Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016)

I was surprised this morning to see partly cloudy skies and no rain. So, after I had shaved, showered and finished my breakfast I headed for the Dawn Patrol Rendezvous Airshow located adjacent to the USAF Museum in Dayton, Ohio. In spite of the rainy weather over the past few days, the turnout for the first day of the Airshow was amazingly well attended.

 

Dawn Patrol

 

Of the 20 Plus World War I replica aircraft entries, between 12 and 15 pilots braved the weather and flew their fragile aircraft here to participate in the first day’s activities. The number of antique cars was limited and there were no antique motorcycles this year. Also, I missed the re-enactment gun emplacements, field hospitals and memorabilia tables that were part of the displays during the 2009 Dawn Patrol Rendezvous Airshow I had attended. I even had to look hard to find people dressed in WWI costumes.

 

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The WWI R/C model airplanes (smallest of which was ¼ scale) flying at this event outnumbered the full-size replica aircraft at least 3 to 1. There were some really beautiful model airplanes, and they were also in the air more often than the full-size replica aircraft were. The bad weather over the past few days I’m sure had a major impact on this event.  However, I still had a great time.

 

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1/2 Scale Sopwith Camel (B6313)

 

The wind came up about 12:30, with a 45° crosswind to the active grass runway, which made it very dangerous for the full-size replica aircraft to take off and land. So, since the flying portion of the air show was going to be delayed for today, (with no time estimate for resumption of full scale aircraft flying), I opted to leave the air show and check out a couple other museums in the area.

 

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The first museum I visited this afternoon was the Bradford Ohio Railroad Museum located some 30 miles north of Dayton in Bradford, Ohio. This turned out to be a very small museum, consisting of mostly Pennsylvania Railroad memorabilia.

 

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Strange as it may seem, the museum is housed in what used to be a small bank, and one of the lingering features of the museum structure, that they could not hide, is a huge bank vault on the ground floor at the back of the one-room museum. There was no rolling stock associated with this museum, but the curator informed me that they hope to eventually add some Bradford Ohio Railroad rolling stock adjacent to their museum when funds allow. This was another one of the Ohio railroad depots that witnessed the Lincoln Funeral Train as it passed through the city of Bradford on April 30, 1865.

 

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Next I headed north again, to visit the Armstrong Air and Space Museum located in Wapakoneta, Ohio which is the hometown of Neil Armstrong. This is a very nicely organized museum, honoring and displaying memorabilia from the military and NASA life of Neil Armstrong.  The museum also honors the Ohioans, who are noted for having defied gravity, with exhibits that detail the feats of the Wright Brothers and John Glen

 

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Now it was time to head back to the motel for tonight, which was located in Franklin, Ohio. Dinner this evening was a delicious meal of leftover Outback Pork Porterhouse with garlic potatos and some of their dark bread. And as I had hoped, it was double yummy!

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

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My Colonial States Trip~Part 13

11 Feb

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

Bill Small Red Plane

 

The U. S. Naval Academy Museum didn’t take long, and I was on my way east to check out the Air Mobility Command Museum in Dover, DE which had a great collection of both hangered and outdoor static aircraft. They had two C-141s on static display and I recorded the tail numbers so I could ask my friend Dick, when I got back home, if he had flown either one of them during his time in the U.S. Air Force. As it turned out, he had flown one of them.

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Next I headed north again to visit the Massey Air Museum in Massey, MD which turned out to be a very small museum with a C-47 sitting in front of one of the hangers and a F4U Corsair mounted on a pedestal next to the rotating beacon tower. The hanger doors were not open and the museum was closed up for the day, (closed at 4:00 pm) so, after a couple photos, I kept moving north.

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I had planned to visit the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum & Library in Wilmington, DE but “Greta” had a hard time recognizing the address, since it was on a rural road, with nothing but a guard station blocking the entrance to the driveway. By the time I finally found the proper address, it was after 5:00 pm and the guard said they were closed. I believe DiVoran would have liked to visit this museum as the estate is used as the location for lectures by famous decorating, clothing and jewelry designers who have contributed to the making of movie and TV series projects such as Mrs. Henderson Presents, The Young Victoria and Downton Abbey. What do you think DiVoran?   After a long day of driving, I stopped and had dinner at the “Metro Diner” in Brooklawn, NJ before heading to the motel in Gloucester City, NJ for the evening.

           

The next morning I left early, driving thru Camden, NJ and across the Delaware River, in time to arrive at the Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia, PA for a day of touring that historic city. My first problem was finding the underground parking garage. I had to circle several blocks a couple of times before I spotted the garage entrance, and found my way up the elevator to the information center. I picked up a map of the area and got directions to where I could obtain my free ticket for a tour of Independence Hall. As I was heading across the park for the Hall, I realized I had left my camera lying on the counter at the visitor’s center. I rushed back to the counter and asked if anyone had seen my camera, but they said, “No.” I was really upset, but what could I do? Evidently, someone had picked it up and walked off with it, and there went my camera and some 400-500 photos of my trip so far, never to be seen again. It was hard, but I thanked God for the camera loss and asked Him to help me give the whole thing up to Him.

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The Independence Hall Tour was very interesting and educational from beginning to end. We were reminded that Independence Hall (originally the Philadelphia State House) was completed in 1753 and is primarily known as the building where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and finally adopted by the colonial representatives. As a side note, the Liberty Bell had its first home in the steeple of the Philadelphia State House.

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Parachute Man

27 Aug

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

Bill

 

When I was six years old (1944) WWII was still raging and most everyone in America was trying to do their part to support the war effort. Children’s toys were among the many things that were slanted toward the war and my parents bought me a small stuffed Parachute Man. My Parachute Man was decked out in a camouflaged battle outfit with a cloth parachute attached to his back. I could wrap the parachute and shroud lines around his body, and then when I threw him high in the air, the parachute would unwind and he would come floating down just like a real U.S. Army Paratrooper. Boy, did I have fun with that Parachute Man! I repeated the sequence over and over, day after day, trying to see how high I could throw him. As you can imagine, the higher I could throw him the longer it took him to float back down to me. I can’t remember how long this went on, but I had gotten pretty good at lofting my Parachute Man way up there.

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 Our house in Dallas, TX was on a corner lot, and the side street was usually fairly busy with traffic, going both ways, and I had been instructed to play on the other side of our yard. One day as I was playing with my Parachute Man, and having so much fun, I didn’t notice that the wind had shifted and was now blowing across our yard from the west. On one of the highest lofts I had ever thrown, when the parachute opened, the wind caught my Parachute Man and he drifted across our yard and out into the cross street, right in front of a car. I held my breath. Was he going to be run over and crushed? I ran to the edge of our yard to see what had happened to my Parachute Man. But, he wasn’t there! Where was he? I looked up and down the street, but he was nowhere in sight. Then I realized… he had gotten caught on the front of that car and I would never see him again. I was a sad little boy for a long time after that, but my parents didn’t buy me another Parachute Man; probably thinking it would end up the same way or worse, if I were to run out into the street after him.

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The next year, our family flew to our new home in Albuquerque, NM in a beautiful shiny American Air Lines DC-3, and I’ve been hooked on airplanes ever since. I had planned to be a fighter pilot when I grew up, but my astigmatism ended that dream. I even took flying lessons, and soloed a couple times, but ran out of money before I got my license.   Now that I’m retired, the # 1 item on my “Bucket List” is to attend as many Airshows and visit as many Aviation Museums as I can while I can still walk.

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Just last October I was at an airshow in Addison, TX to see “FIFI” the only flying B-29 in the world, and happened to run into Bob Bearden. Bob was a sergeant in the 507th Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, who parachuted into France on June 6, 1944 as part of the Normandy invasion during WWII. Bob was dressed in his jump gear and boots and he reminded me of my Parachute Man. It was my privilege to meet and talk with Bob and have my picture taken with him, in front of a C-47, painted with invasion stripes, just like the plane he and his fellow paratroopers jumped from on that infamous day so many years ago.

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         “Thank you Bob and all those many other Parachute Men for your service to our country.”

 

 

 

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My Western Trip Part~15

13 Aug

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill

 Heading back west from Meteor Crater, I passed signs for roads leading to some of the most unique sounding towns, such as Two Guns and Twin Arrows. Then a little ways farther down the road, I passed a man carrying a cross with wheels on the long end. What a sight that was. It reminded me of Arthur Blessitt, who carried a cross from the west coast to the east coast of the U.S. back in the late 1960s. When I got to Williams, AZ I took another little side trip, north on S.R. 64 to Valle, AZ to visit the Planes of Fame Air Museum. This museum has a couple of the planes that are special to me, one being General Douglas MacArthur’s Lockheed C-121A Constellation (N422NA) that he named “Bataan.” The other is a Pacific Air Lines Martin 4-0-4 (N636X) that I worked on at the Los Angeles International Airport in 1958-1960s while I was attending Northrop University.

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Next door to the POF Air Museum is the Grand Canyon Valle Airport, which has a very nice collection of vintage aircraft and vehicles. Their movie and airline famous1929 5-AT-C Ford Tri-motor (N414H) is painted in the colors of Scenic Airways (predecessor to Grand Canyon Airlines), and among its many other awards, won the National Aviation Heritage Invitational (NAHI) Howard Hughes Trophy at the 2012 Reno Air Races.

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Then I headed west on I-40 again, this time toward Las Vegas, my beginning and ending destination for this trip. I passed thru Ash Fork and Seligman before stopping at the Airport in Kingman, AZ to visit the Kingman Army Airfield Museum. But again, they were closed that day, so I continued on into Kingman to visit the Powerhouse Route 66 Museum and the Kingman Railroad Museum.

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Since time was beginning to get a little tight, I didn’t spend a lot of time in those two museums, but got back on the road for Las Vegas. I made it into town in time to visit the National Atomic Testing Museum, which documents the history of U.S. nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), which was originally called The Nevada Proving Grounds. The NTS is located in the desert only 65 miles north of Las Vegas, and has been the location for 928 nuclear tests of all types and sizes, since the first detonation on January 27, 1951. This includes above-ground, underground and atmospheric tests.

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I began the next morning by turning in the rental car (3356 miles), and then it was stand in line for baggage check-in, Security checks, and wait for my Southwest flight back to the “Green” of Orlando, FL and home. We had made arrangements for my sister Judy and her husband Fred to meet DiVoran and me at Sonny’s BBQ for dinner upon my arrival, so we had a great dinner of Baby Back Ribs, with all the trimmings. Then it was onto S.R. 528 and east to Titusville for a good night’s sleep in my own bed. Boy did that feel good! I really enjoyed this trip, and am looking forward to the next one, but DiVoran says I will need to cut back a little on that one. I hope you have enjoyed reading about “My Western Trip” as much as I have enjoyed writing about it.

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—–The End—–

 

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My Western Trip~Part 13

30 Jul

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill Small Red Plane

I started out early the next day so I could stop at the Timpa R/C Model Airfield to see what kind of planes they might be flying. There was a small crowd as the winds had been blowing fairly hard the day before and the weather man had forecasted more of the same. The Timpa R/C site is located on 160 acres of unobstructed land for radio control airplane and helicopter flying, with a 750’ paved runway, paved run-up area and covered assembly area with tables. It was one of the nicest R/C sites I have seen in a long time. The club members were very cordial and I got some great photos of them and their planes.

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My next stop was to visit the CAF Arizona Airbase Museum in Mesa, AZ. This was a very enjoyable visit, as the museum had a great collection of well-restored aircraft including the only Grumman AF-2S Guardian I had ever seen. The Guardian was a huge aircraft and I couldn’t believe it was carrier rated back when U.S. carriers only had smaller straight flight decks. The plane was in their restoration hanger in the final stages of preparation for its first post restoration flight test.

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The Wings of Flight Museum was on the other side of the Falcon Field Airport, so I hitched a ride with one of the local FBO fueling employees in his electric cart. Wings of Flight turned out to be a private aerobatic team that hires out for airshows and other aviation events mainly in the immediate Arizona area. Two of the pilots were taking a break from an aircraft inspection and invited me to join them for a cup of coffee. They told me about how their eight-plane business had gotten started with just two of them, and how it just kept on growing. They didn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry and could have talked to me all day if I had wanted to. They seemed like a really great bunch of guys, doing what they all loved to do – fly.

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Next, I headed to Peoria, AZ to visit the Challenger Space Center that actually turned out to be a children’s learning center. So I headed down the road to Chandler, AZ to visit the Rawhide Western Town. This was a smaller version of Tombstone, but was more about attractions and a Steakhouse than anything else. When the street barkers started calling for people to head for the O.K. Corral shootout show, the whole place became deserted, and I left. Somewhere on one of the smaller roads on my way to or from the Rawhide Western Town, a Roadrunner ran across the road in front of my car, and I was instantly transported back to when I was much younger, driving on a two-lane road somewhere in New Mexico, where it was a common sight to see Roadrunners run from one side of the road to the other. What a thrill that was!   By the time I got back into Phoenix, and found the Wingspan Air Museum, they were closed. So I stopped and had a delicious Fuddruckers ¼-pound BBQ Burger and Raspberry Ice Tea, after which i went to the motel for some rest and TV.

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—–To Be Continued—–

 

 

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My Western Trip~Part 1

7 May

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill Lites

Bill Lites

Being an airplane enthusiast, one of the places I had always wanted to visit, was the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona. My friends all told me it was a magnificent place to see, and the aerial photos I had seen on the internet proved it. The museum itself is on 80 acres, and then there is what is called “The Bone Yard” which is another 300 acres of U.S. Airplane storage. Wow! I couldn’t miss seeing that.

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So, I started looking in my Aviation Museum Guide for what other aviation museums I could manage to see in the Southwest, and that’s how I came up with “My Western Trip” route. Now you might think that makes for a long trip, but the way I look at it, once I’m in an area, I like to see as many different kinds of museums (not just aviation museums) as possible. In addition, I really enjoy the planning of a trip, and as a result of my research, my list of museums began to grow. Since my initial plans were to start and end my trip in Los Angeles, I wanted to include a visit with DiVoran’s brother and his wife Susan, in Vista, CA and our high school friends Jim and Charlene in San Diego. Then, while in California, there was the Edwards AFB museum tour I wanted to take. That tour was only given two days each month and had to be scheduled 30 day in advance. Once I selected a date, I had to work my travel days (from my initial point) around that date. So, you can see some of the many factors I had to deal with to make this trip work.

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When researching rental car prices, I discovered that the same car rented in Las Vegas was $300 cheaper than that same class of car I had planned to rent in L.A. or San Diego. That savings would pay for most of my gas on this trip, so now my trip was going to start and end in Las Vegas. See how fast these kinds of trip plans can change. Knowing how hot it could get in the Southwest desert at times, I had planned this trip for the first part of April in hopes the weather would not be too hot. After much fine tuning of my travel itinerary, I was finally ready to go. I had never been to Las Vegas, and when we landed, my first surprise was that the Airport was actually landscaped with Saguaro cactus, Mesquite trees and Tumbleweeds. That made for a very unusual landscape theme.         

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Then, on my way to Baggage Claim, I passed thru several areas filled with gaming machines, many of which were pinging away like pinball machines. The Baggage Claim area was surrounded with gaming machines and huge screens loudly advertising what was currently being feathered at each of the showplaces on the “Strip” that week.

 The rental car process went as smooth as a breeze, but then at the Downtown Grand Hotel, where I was to stay the first two nights, I had to thread my way thru a large Casino filled with all manner of gaming machines to get to the Check-in desk. I was overwhelmed by the whole commercial scene.

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                                                                        —–To Be Continued—–

 

 

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Our Trip To The UK~Part 11

12 Feb

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

Bill

 

As it happened, our B & B hostess in York was a lovely single lady who was a dedicated Julio Iglesias fan, and had followed him all over Europe and the UK.  She had a beautiful Collie dog that followed us everywhere, and if you don’t recognize that guy in the photo, on the hutch in the picture below, I’ll give you a hint, it’s an autographed photo of Julio of course. 

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She directed us to the Pickering & Co. Bookstore on the Shambles, which was at the top of the list of places to see for DiVoran.  Also in the York area, of historical interest to me, was the Jorvik Vikiing Center, which houses many artifacts from the 1100-year-old Viking city of Jorvík.  Well-preserved remains of that city were discovered during excavations between 1976 & 1981.  Many items, from that 900 AD time period, such as workshops, fences, animal pens, privies and wells, were unearthed.  Also found were many items made of durable materials such as pottery, metalwork and bones. Surprisingly, many wood, leather and textiles items, along with plant and animal remains were found that had been preserved in oxygen-deprived wet clay of the region.

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After all that exploring of the York city area, we stopped to rest and have tea at the famous Betty’s Tea Room.  The place was crowded, and a delightful local accountant asked if he could sit at our table with us.  Somehow the subject of street minstrels (Buskers) came up and he informed us that many of them earned very adequate livings, since they didn’t have to report the donations they received for their Busking to the government.

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Next we stopped at the American Air Museum in Britain, of which I had became a founding member.  The museum is part of the Imperial War Museum, and stands as a memorial to the 30,000 American airmen who gave their lives, flying from air bases in the UK, in defense of liberty during the Second World War.  Since we were there, that small annex of the IWM has grown into a huge museum with over 25 airplanes representing all of the conflicts American airman have participated in during WWII to the present day.

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Then we travelled to Hatfield, to visit the birthplace of the de Havilland Aircraft Company, builder of many of Britain’s WWII fighters and bombers.  The Comet Hotel is an Art Deco designed building that was originally built in 1936 as the administration building for Geoffrey de Havilland’s aircraft factory.  The design was intended to reflect de Havilland’s Comet Racer aeroplane design.  At that time, the de Havilland airfield and testing grounds were located just opposite of what is now the hotel.  A statue of the famous Comet Racer G-ACS sits in front of the hotel while the original aeroplane is now housed in The Shuttleworth Collection near Biggleswade.

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From there we took the route around the eastern side of London to the town of Crawley, where we had our B & B base for the last couple of days of our stay in the UK.  Our hosts, Ron & Brenda Potts,  were some of the nicest people you would ever meet, and were very helpful with recommendations for site seeing and directions for the best ways to get around the London area.   They had both been part of the thousands of British children who were sent to the country during the London Blitz in WWII, and stayed there until the war was over.  They had many fascinating stories to tell us about their wartime experiences.

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—–To Be Continued—–

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My Southwest Adventure Part~5

20 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Bill 

Continuing into downtown Albuquerque, I was pleased to see most of the stores have been restored, and are open for business since the last time I was there.  Gone are all the 1 boarded up store fronts, while the Kimo Theater and the Indian Jewelry stores are still going strong.  “Old town Albuquerque is a thriving tourist center, and the Rio Grande River actually had water in it.  Of course, most of that water had probably come from the heavy rains and flooding in Colorado.  The city has expanded toward all points of the compass, and is no longer the Albuquerque where I grew up.  Now it’s just another big city, with all the big city problems, as far as I am concerned.

As it happened, this was the week of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, and I 2would have been really disappointed if I had traveled all that way for the Balloon Fiesta, only to have rainy and windy weather the only two days I was there.  Actually, I hadn’t even realized I was going to be in Albuquerque during the Balloon Fiesta until I had made all my motel reservations, and couldn’t change them.  However, the Anderson-Abruzzo  International Balloon Museum Foundation has built a beautiful big Balloon Museum since I had last been in Albuquerque, so I was able to visit the museum in spite of the bad weather. 

After saying goodbye to my friend Leon, I headed East on I-40 toward Amarillo, TX to begin the return leg of my trip.  Leaving Albuquerque, as I was passing through the Tijeras Canon, I spotted one of the many ceremonial Penitente crosses on the hillside 3that had always been there since I was a teenager.  We had heard all kinds of stories about the closed society of “Los Penitentes” or “The Brothers of the Pious Fraternity of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene” who lived somewhere in the Tijeras Canon area, and practiced their mysterious rituals there.  They  were known for their ascetic practices, which included self-flagellation in private ceremonies during Lent, and processions during Holy Week which ended with the reenactment of Christ’s crucifixion on Good Friday.  Thus, the crosses we guessed.  I never knew anyone who witnessed one of their ceremonies or knew a Penitente personally.

4Then it was on thru Moriarty, NM with its Tee-Pee Motel and Santa Rosa, NM, which I had missed on that scary day, on my way to Albuquerque, just a few days before.  Then I passed thru Tucumcari, NM, back across the border into West Texas, thru Wildorado,TX with its many wind generators, and finally into Amarillo, TX.

 While in Amarillo, I visited the CAF Dew Line Squadron, located at the Tradewind Airport, 5the Texas Air & Space Museum located at the Rick Husband International Airport, and the Kwahadi Museum of the American Indian located on I-40 just east of the city.  This American Indian Museum had some of the most beautiful paintings, and when I ask about them, was told most of them were painted by an author named Thomas E. Mails, as illustrations for his book “Mystic Warriors of the Plains.”

The next day, after driving to Ft. Worth, I visited the Veteran’s Memorial Air Park, which has been combined to display artifacts and aircraft represented in the B-36 Peacemaker Museum, the OV-10 Bronco Museum, and the Forward Air Controller Museum, all in one location next to the Meacham International Airport .  After leaving the VMAP, I ask for directions to the Vintage Flying Museum, which was just down the street, and was also adjacent to the Meacham International Airport.

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—–To Be Continued—–

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Springtime in Wisconsin

12 Jun

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

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During a recent trip to the Oshkosh AirVenture Museum, and to visit other local Wisconsin museums and airshows, I was amazed to see the huge numbers of Canadian Geese in and around most of the areas, I traveled.

I didn’t pay much attention to this until on one occasion as I traveled down a four-lane city street, and had to stop for a family of geese crossing the road.  There was Mama leading the way with three tiny goslings trailing along behind 2her and Papa bringing up the rear.  What a sight!  All this rush-hour traffic brought to a halt by these tiny creatures.

The next day I went to visit a Railroad Museum in another city.  After viewing the information video in the main building, I started down the walkway to the Engine House, and was struck by the amount of what looked like dog poop on the sidewalk.  I thought, “These people need to tell the dog owners to pick up after their dogs, or at least the museum needs to wash down the sidewalks once i3n a while.”   Being careful where I stepped, I moved onto the grass to get a better view for a camera shot, and noticed that the grass was littered with the same “dog poop.”

Then it dawned on me that this was Canadian Geese droppings.  I should have realized what I was 4seeing sooner, because I had seen fields and ponds covered with Canadian Geese no matter where I had gone on this trip.

On one evening during this trip, I had dinner with my niece and her husband and I related my goose story to them.  He told me his company had to rig special anti-geese devices over their retention ponds to try to keep the geese from congregating.  In addition, they have contracted with a private company who brought 5their dogs to chase the geese off their property.  The Canadian Goose population has recently increased in many areas to the point that they are now considered a pest and a threat to airline traffic (Ref. US Airways flight 1549).

On another day, at the Old World Wisconsin historic site, in one of the sheep pins, I was thrilled to see 6four brand new baby lambs.  The guide told us that two of them had be born the day before and two (twins) had been born just that morning.  They were the cutest little things you could imagine.

I didn’t think much more about it until I was traveling back across the countryside toward the motel and saw a large open field with maybe one hundred sheep grazing and about the same number of small 7baby lambs staying close to their mothers.  What a sight!  I guessed it must truly be the lambing season there in central Wisconsin.

Then on another day, while driving to another museum, I spotted a small herd of Buffalo grazing in a field of yellow dandelions.  And, sure enough, there were a few new-born buffalo in the herd.  Now I thought the West was the only place where people were raising buffalo now a days.  I8 was glad to see even these small herds of them there in Wisconsin.    I guess they will prosper most anywhere they are not being hunted.  Ever had a Buffalo Burger?  I had one years ago and it was great!

I guess you would have to say I got a real close-up and personal view of what it’s like to live in Wisconsin in the Spring.  It was a wonderful experience, and the airplane museums were great too!

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