Hometown Holiday

This is our week off. We've spent the past 2 weeks building coops, pouring sidewalks, wrangling chickens, constructing fences, so the rest of this week, our family is enjoying a hometown holiday. Our plan this morning was to go fishing at 'Uncle Joe's' pond, but it as it turns out, we're supposed to have up to 1.5 inches of rain today. So icksne on the ishingfe. Instead, we loaded up the kids and drove about 25 miles to the USAF museum, just outside of Dayton, Ohio. Admission is free and it's really a fascinating place. They have displays on the early days of flight right up to modern aircraft; they also have the original Apollo 11 space module and Bockscar, the plane that dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb that ended WWII. Sometimes it's easy to forget what neat stuff you can see and do locally. Anyway, here's some pics I took before my camera batteries took a permanent vacation.

Isaac and Mara in front of the Apollo 11 space module. Notice how the bottom got all burned up from entering the atmosphere.

Bockscar...the plane that brought an end to WWII.

Leftover space food from one of the Apollo missions. Or as I call it: "Food Stores, NASA-Style".

Mara and Isaac trying out some aircraft. There were a number of hands-on, crawl-in, try-it-out type exhibits at the museum.

Isaac in front of 'Hop Along', a helicopter in the Cold War exhibit.

The marketing geniuses who designed the museum put the main walkway to the exhibits right through the gift shop, so needless to say, we did a little gift-shopping. We found some very affordable foam rockets for the kids to play with and a machine that embosses pictures onto coins. All in all, a good, inexpensive, local trip for the whole family.