Monday we got up and went to Starbucks, Hubby has a serious Starbucks fettish LOL, got some breakfast, greek yogurt and vanilla scones, and a Chai tea, Hubby has a vente peppermint mocha, he is seriously addicted to them LOL. Then we headed up the coast on Hwy 101. When we got to Tillamook we pulled into the Tillamook Air Museum. The shear size of this building is amazing!! and totally framed out of wood!
The doors are Huge! The pillers on the left are the remnants of another building that burnt down in the '90's.
Inside the gift shop there are little planes hanging from the roof, and a small cafe.
I had to take this so you could see the skeleton of the building.
Inside the shear size is mind boggleing!!! 192 feet to the top! and 3 football fields long! The exhibits tell all about building them and how long and how many people, it was quite an undertaking in the day!
The history of these buildings is fascinating. They were built to hold blimps during World War II. This pic shows how many they could fit in one hanger! Eight of them!
It now houses antique aircraft, and the museum and way in the back RV storage! Its that big!
On one side you can go into a room and watch a short movie about the history of the area and the war and the need for the buildings and the air ships. There is a lot of World War two memorabilia from the local area. It is amazing to learn that, yes the mainland of the US was attacked during the war, by ballons with bombs hanging from them, sent from Japan! A few even made it to land!
Hubby looking up at the roof, you are in there looking around and cant help but keep looking up, it is so big!
This huge plane is out front, you had to pay another $3 to go walk through it, we didnt.
Hubby looking inside the cockpit of a plane.
I found a Mustang! LOL LOL
These old vehicles from WWII are pretty cool, amazing what they had to work with!
They seem so old and crude by todays equipment, although the Jeep was the most inovative machine of the war.
This little bicycle was funny, I could just picture a young Army private riding this around LOL
This is a hot air ballon hanging from the rafters, you do not get over the shear size of this building the whole time you are there! The museum planes, most of them are still flying! It is a working exhibit. The museum space took up about 1/2+ of the building LOL, the rest was RVs.
This is a really funky helicopter, see the double blades? It was an experimental craft. I sure dont know how it flew without those blades hitting each other!
On one side they have a sheeted ceiling covering the planes.
A cool old firetruck. You can see the RVs in the back that are stored there.
There is an actual room that houses the machine that made the helium to fill all the air ships. The air ships would escort destroyers, spotting for submarines. there were air ship stations all around the US coast. from Oregon to Maine. I believe that it was the Army Air Corp, back then before the Air Force split off to its own. There is a lot of Navy history too!
An antique Air Force uniform.
I dont even want to imagin what the water out of these cans would even taste like! bleck!
This old fighter has cute painting on it.
This one is really strange looking, land or sea!
It could land on water too!
And back out to the gift shop. We spotted this group of Red Hatters! LOL, there for lunch at the Cafe. They were pretty cute, I nonchallantly took this pic of them LOL There were more behind me in the gift shop. They were there on a bus from a retirement home.
I have no idea how long we were in the Museum, but it was really cool! I you ever get down that way, and like history and planes do stop in!
From here we headed north to Seaside and Astoria and then East to home. We had a great weekend, it was really nice to get away for a few days.
