DV Meets the Titan
Dec. 30th, 2005 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaJe Aeroplane Titanique!!!!
We began our adventure home on Wednesday. We decided to go down the coast and do some hiking and stuff along the way. I spent the night before loading up my brain with a book of soviet sci-fi which was quite fun and I'll have to share with Jon later. Anyhow..
December 24th marked the 100th birthday of one of my favourite lunatics, Howard Hughes. As we drove out to the coast, we passed a sign for the aviation museum and the Spruce Goose. I begged a detour and off we went, not to be disappointed at all! Oh my god is it magnificent! It's a reminder of how awsome the world was back in the 40s. There was still all the beautiful architecture and everyone was trying to do things with style and do them BIG! This craft is the last of it's kind, I think. Ships like the Titanic and the Hendenburg lay in ruin but the Goose is in one piece and you are beneath and look up at it and it's so unbelievably huge. It's just an amazing thing to behold. I can't really say anything that would do it justice or put it in perspective. You see old newsreel photos of it and you just don't get a sense of how truly awsome it is.
Here's a picture of the museum.
You see that little black thing under the second engine from the right. That's the SR-71 Blackbird. Laying next to it on display is a Titan II rocket, which isn't nearly as long as the Goose. It's really an overwhelming thing to see. And then you go up inside of it and EVERYTHING is made of wood in it. The entire airframe is wood. The hull is wood and canvas. It was just wow.
The rest of the exhibits were pretty neat too. Lots of fighter planes, which aren't my thing although I took a lot of photos of different things for reference because while I'm not into war machines, I really like the forms and grace of aircraft. Radial motors are also just neat to look at, and okay, I admit the turrets on the bombers were pretty cool too. There was some pretty rare stuff there too. B-29 bomber, B-17 bomber (both absolutely tiny compared to the HK-1 (The Spruce Goose's official name) Also a P-38 lightning, part of a japanese zero, a sopwith camel, some old french racing planes and a few other nifty things. Outside there were some rusting russian tanks which looked like they were leftovers from WWII that were also pretty cool. Oh yeah. There was also a cargo-return/emergency escape re-usable russian capsule that was pretty spiff. All in all, I had a great time and wish we could have spent just a little longer there. It was 3:30 when we got there though and the museum closed at 5. Ohwell.
Edit: Oh. I forgot. Stacey took me to a clam-chowder place she really liked called 'Mo's' which was pretty good. We had dinner there, then drove a bit further. We ended the evening at an old town on a river, got a river-facing hotel room that was warm and cozy. We walked into town and had hot toddys and beer at a bar, played pool, talked and sketched for a while before returning to the hotel and lazing about.
We began our adventure home on Wednesday. We decided to go down the coast and do some hiking and stuff along the way. I spent the night before loading up my brain with a book of soviet sci-fi which was quite fun and I'll have to share with Jon later. Anyhow..
December 24th marked the 100th birthday of one of my favourite lunatics, Howard Hughes. As we drove out to the coast, we passed a sign for the aviation museum and the Spruce Goose. I begged a detour and off we went, not to be disappointed at all! Oh my god is it magnificent! It's a reminder of how awsome the world was back in the 40s. There was still all the beautiful architecture and everyone was trying to do things with style and do them BIG! This craft is the last of it's kind, I think. Ships like the Titanic and the Hendenburg lay in ruin but the Goose is in one piece and you are beneath and look up at it and it's so unbelievably huge. It's just an amazing thing to behold. I can't really say anything that would do it justice or put it in perspective. You see old newsreel photos of it and you just don't get a sense of how truly awsome it is.
Here's a picture of the museum.
You see that little black thing under the second engine from the right. That's the SR-71 Blackbird. Laying next to it on display is a Titan II rocket, which isn't nearly as long as the Goose. It's really an overwhelming thing to see. And then you go up inside of it and EVERYTHING is made of wood in it. The entire airframe is wood. The hull is wood and canvas. It was just wow.
The rest of the exhibits were pretty neat too. Lots of fighter planes, which aren't my thing although I took a lot of photos of different things for reference because while I'm not into war machines, I really like the forms and grace of aircraft. Radial motors are also just neat to look at, and okay, I admit the turrets on the bombers were pretty cool too. There was some pretty rare stuff there too. B-29 bomber, B-17 bomber (both absolutely tiny compared to the HK-1 (The Spruce Goose's official name) Also a P-38 lightning, part of a japanese zero, a sopwith camel, some old french racing planes and a few other nifty things. Outside there were some rusting russian tanks which looked like they were leftovers from WWII that were also pretty cool. Oh yeah. There was also a cargo-return/emergency escape re-usable russian capsule that was pretty spiff. All in all, I had a great time and wish we could have spent just a little longer there. It was 3:30 when we got there though and the museum closed at 5. Ohwell.
Edit: Oh. I forgot. Stacey took me to a clam-chowder place she really liked called 'Mo's' which was pretty good. We had dinner there, then drove a bit further. We ended the evening at an old town on a river, got a river-facing hotel room that was warm and cozy. We walked into town and had hot toddys and beer at a bar, played pool, talked and sketched for a while before returning to the hotel and lazing about.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-31 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-01 06:00 am (UTC)I kick myself for never visiting the Hercules when he was in Long Beach.
Where is this museum located?
I must make a pilgrimage.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-01 09:34 am (UTC)I ate at Mo's myself during Labor Day weekend, it was pretty good stuff. Did you hear the story about why there's a garage door in place of a front wall, dv_girl? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-04 10:08 pm (UTC)And there's an aesthetic to military equipment that civilian stuff just doesn't have. Civilian stuff is always streamlined, cushioned, carefully cleaned up, where military stuff tends to be built cheaply, chunkily, and fast. I definitely agree with you about radial engines being pretty.