Day 32 (Monday, July 26th) Oregon Coastline and the Spruce Goose

We stayed put at our campground in Portland, but took the day to drive out to the coastline of Oregon. On the way there we stopped to look through the Evergreen Air & Space Museum, where the Howard Highes plane, the "Spruce Goose" is located.

We started at the Spruce Goose and it's a good thing we did some research before we left beause the museum is so much more than we'd ever imagined. As you drive up the entrace you're greeted by a building under construction. Mounted on the roof like a hood ornament is a Boeing 747.....a real one. The building under it will be an indoor water park when construction finishes, later this year. The rest of the museum is three huge buildings, although one is just a couple of planes and an IMAX theater. One of the two largest buildings is an air museum and the other is a space museum.

To begin with, the Spruce Goose is the largest mono-hull seaplane ever constructed. It's 290 feet long, 320 feet in wingspan, and over eight stories tall at the tail. We got to go inside the aircraft and listen to people who helped restore it for display. It was driven by eight 3,000 horsepower engines and actually flew before Howard Hughes hid it away and went into hiding. In the same air museum building are about 60 other aircraft, ranging from a replica of the Wright Flyer through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam era aircraft, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, and transports, and ending with modern day jet fighters, Learjets, and more. There's actually an exact replica of a Sopwith Camel (Snoopy's ride) and the Fokker tri-plane of his (cartoon) enemy, and real-life WWI ace, the Red Baron.

Building two is dedicated to space and contains exact replicas of the lunar lander and lunar rover. There are Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury capsules, a Titan missile, a SR-71 Blackbird, a real Sputnik, some re-entry vehicles, space suits, and an amazing amount of other stuff. We were glad we did our research because we needed several hours just to walk around the vast exhibition areas. There was always something new just around the corner.

After we left the museum, we drove the rest of the way out to the coast of Oregon and drove along the coastal highway for about 40 miles. There was a lot of cloud cover right on the coast and the temperature was in the low 50s. Naturally, we were still dressed in shorts and t-shirts so it was pretty brisk when we left the truck. We got out on the beach and let the boys put their feet in the Pacific Ocean. Kim had warned them that it wasn't warm, but they were both shocked. They had a contest for who could keep their feet in the surf the longest; Jake won, but couldn't feel his feet after about 40 seconds. Kim, of course, laughed until she almost cried. We got to see some amazing coastline and wandered through a couple state parks to see lighthouses and bird rookeries. It was a long ride back to the trailer, but the trip was worth it.

Tomorrow, we'll check out Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge and then pull the trailer up nearer to Mount St. Helens.