Airplanes

While we were in Oregon I wanted to go see the Spruce Goose but got sidetracked the first day in Tillamook. This town on the very northwest coast of Oregon is famous for the Tillamook cheese that you can buy everywhere.   We got sidetracked here,not because of cheese but, because of blimps. Tillamook is home to one of the few blimp hangers left in  the US and is the largest wooden structure in the world. It is HUGE!! It is 1,072 ft long, 296 ft wide and 192 ft high. It covers 7 acres and the doors on each end are 120 ft high. .. Museum..The US Navy built 17 of these hangers in1942 with two being built at NAS Tillamook.The second was completed in 27 days, but was burned in 1992 and the one left now houses one of the top five privately owned aircraft collection in the nation with over 30 warbirds that are still flying.  A very interesting place.

After leaving the museum we saw a sign that read…. Munson Falls Natural Area. It was a nice afternoon so we thought.. lets check it out.  After about 10 minutes on a narrow gravel road we thought that this was a mistake. The end of the road came soon after that with a small turnaround and parking area. We got out and started down a narrow path through a rainforest. Trees dripping with moss and many different ferns and flowers along side a narrow creek. About 15 minutes walk and the trail ended with a beautiful view of a neat 100 ft high waterfalls. Really cool and interesting place.

 The next day we traveled to McMinnville OR and the Evergreen air & Space Museum.. Evergreen.. that is home to the famous Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose. It is bigger than you can believe and is housed in a huge building and it dwarfs all the other planes that are there. The museum is really neat with many airplanes in one building and outside and many NASA and space  related displays in another building. There is also an IMAX theater there that has 2 or 3 different shows every day. Both museums were very interesting.They also had an art show going on with many weird metal sculptures. Very  unique and wonderful.