Day 1

Monday March 21, 2005:
Today we packed up and left town, first stop! McMinnville, home of Evergreen Aviation Museum. This museum is full of cool planes. It has a replica of the Write Flyer and some early planes and tons of old war planes. Included in the exhibit are a B17G Flying fortress (13 guns, crew of 10) and an SR71 Blackbird (speed world-record holder mach 3.5) along with lots of WWI, WWII, and modern (Vietnam, Korea) war planes. Some biplanes and historic passenger planes round out the display. The main attraction, however, is the H-4 Hercules Flying Boat, better known as the Spruce Goose. It’s the world’s largest wooden plane that ever flew. It is 218 feet 8 inches from nose to tail and 319 feet 11 inches from wingtip to wingtip! The vertical fin rises almost 8 stories from the ground. It’s huge! Built by Howard Hughes with a controversial government contract, it was designed for flying cargo to Europe during WWII avoiding enemy submarines. It wasn’t finished until after the war had ended. It was made of birch wood because Hughes wasn’t allowed to use critical materials. He was also not allowed to hire any experienced workers for his project so as to not detract from the war effort. It’s only flight lasted a little more than a mile at 70 feet above water. Howard Hughes made the flight himself as an unexpected finale to a taxi test in California. Hopefully I’ve gotten the facts down straight; take a look at the photos, we really enjoyed ourselves with the planes.
Our campsite is at Beverly Beach, we found a site and set up camp, then tried to light a fire. Having experienced the challenge of lighting damp wood here in Oregon, Susan purchased a bundle of “dry” firewood. We huffed and puffed for quite a while and managed to cook our hotdogs in the dark. After eating them (without condiments) we enjoyed a moonlit stroll on the sandy beach. It was beautiful. That night was pretty chilly and we didn’t warm up in our sleeping bags as much as we’d hoped.