Good Morning, Everybody,
I hope this finds you well! Today’s submission is mine.
This past weekend, I caught a movie at the Smithsonian Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum near Dulles Airport, in Virginia. It’s the largest IMAX screen in the state and is a great place to see a movie, even if the food and seats are sub-optimal.
The way this free museum works is that parking is $15 per car until 4 pm, then it’s free until the 5:30 pm museum closing time. Movies are scheduled around 4:30, so you can avoid paying the parking fee, and the theater area is open into the night. For movies, we try to arrive precisely at 4 so we have some time to wander the museum before the show.
In this visit, I ran around and grabbed a few shots of the aircraft (and spacecraft!) to help share this amazing museum. The moment I walked in, I knew I had to scurry around and get some pictures for Balloon Juice, something that I hadn’t planned on until inspiration hit. I plan to go back and spend a day there so I can look at, and photograph, as many individual exhibits as possible, which I will of course post. They are open every day except Christmas Day, so I plan to go when it’s a bad weather day sometime soon.
Today’s photos are, for the most part, filled with too many vehicles to mention (plus I didn’t take notes since I was rushed), but I wanted to share this wonderful museum with you. Consider this an appetizer for a series of posts later this year.
I know that many of you travel as part of your work, as I used to. The museum is just a few minutes’ shuttle bus ride from Dulles Airport, and it’s easy to spend 2-4 hours minimum looking around and marveling at the exhibits. For years I’ve recommended that folks consider routing themselves through Dulles for connecting flights, leaving themselves a 4-6 hour layover to enjoy the museum at leisure. It’s worth it, and beats spending 2 hours laid-over at another airport with nothing to improve you.
Since this is a standard post and not the OTR interface, accept my apologies for the different formatting. There are a host of pics after the “Read More” link.
This is an overhead view showing some WWI and prior aircraft. I always enter the exhibit area from above, on this side. It just feels right to start with an overhead view and with ~WWI aircraft and then work towards WWII, modern, and then the Space stuff as the final leg.
On The Road – Alain at Udvar-Hazy MuseumPost + Comments (26)