The arsenal of democracy

We made the trek down to Tucson on Monday to deliver Girl Scout cookies. Paige had plans to take the kids to the zoo while we were there. I somehow finagled other plans...

A visit to see a small portion of the arsenal of democracy (otherwise known as the Pima Air and Space Museum.)

An SR-71. Acres of supersonic titanium, bought from the Russians and turned into a plane and then sent back over the USSR to spy on them, moving literally faster than a speeding bullet. Amazing...

The A-10 Warthog. In the dreams of my boyhood, when I was going to grow up to be a pilot, I think this was my favorite plane. Basically a flying tank, built around a gun spewing 30 mm goodness at 3,900 rounds per minute...

"Dad, what are those things?!?!" Machine guns buddy, machine guns...

"Dad, what goes in there?!?!" Atomic bombs buddy, atomic bombs...

(I think it was somewhere about this point in the trip, amidst questions about machine guns and bombs and why we needed planes packed full of both, that my wife commented on what a lovely and educational field trip I had chosen for our children. Hey, it's either that, or explaining why those two baboons are, ummm, "wrestling"...)

Heaven forbid we actually walk, you know... on the bridge.

A B-36 Peacemaker...

A B-52. No, not the ones that sing Love Shack...

This was one of two B-52's modified to carry the X-15

About to get blasted by the exhaust of an F-4...

Strolling the rows of aerodynamic goodness...

Then back to their favorite part of the whole place. The kid's area, where they could pretend to fly all the airplanes and actually climb into them.

I wasn't sure if I had ever been here as a kid. Which is odd, as many times as we drove down to Tucson in my childhood. I would have thought we would have been at least once, given my love of planes as a kid. But now that I have been there, I realize that my parents must have kept it a deep secret that there was a whole museum of planes in Tucson, because if I had known about it, I probably would have begged to go on every trip down there.

I don't think my kids (or wife) found it nearly as fascinating as I did, but I will definitely be making a trip back there sometime for a longer tour.