Labor Day in Portland - Part IV

After a little lunch, we drove to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum....

we LOVE a good air museum!

This one is proud to display the "Spruce Goose"...a mammoth flying boat that was designed to fly troops and supplies across the Atlantic in the mid 1940's. Because materials were scarce due to the war, Howard Hughes and his team built it out of wood...thus the name "Spruce Goose" (although it actually wasn't made of spruce, but some other wood). The story of this plane is incredible....check it out here.

Anyway, that was the crown jewel of the museum, but there were plenty of really cool early aviation models and exhibits that demonstrated how planes fly.

Sitting in actual airplane seats is fun no matter WHERE the seats are!

The space museum next door had super cool space stuff and something Aaron had been itching to see....

the SR-71 Blackbird!

Although I could easily tell that it was very stealthy looking, I had to look up why it was cool. :) Apparently it was "developed as a long-range strategic reconnaissance (spy) aircraft capable of flying at speeds over Mach 3.2 and at 85,000 feet." That means it was really fast and could spy on people and then zoom away without being caught or shot down! :) It really was awesome to see!

They also had really cool space stuff, too, including this simulator where you could try to land the space shuttle! Pretty hard to keep it steady!

After a super cool morning of discovery, we were ready to do some shopping! Well, the girls were ready!

We hit our favorite outlet joint, Woodburn Outlets, and raced around to grab all the deals we could before they closed!

A very full day, but not too full that we couldn't squeeze in one more swim! :)