Seattle Vacation, Part 4

This is the last post on our vacation (that doesn't have to do with Fluevogs ... wait for the next post!), which we ended on a geeky note. The Museum of Flight is just a few miles from the Seattle-Tacoma airport, so we spent our last hours in Seattle there. It is a very impressive museum with an amazing collection of real-life and model airplanes, space vehicles, and military/NASA paraphernalia. It's a great place for kids because there are many interactive educational exhibits with buttons to push and levers to move, and partial replicas of planes and jets where you can sit in the cockpit. There was a cool replica of a small part of the International Space Station that included the exercise area for the astronauts -- basically, a treadmill that was on the "ceiling" (since they float in space there is no ceiling for them, just six-sided rooms). Wouldn't that exhibit be perfect if they could replicate the floating, too? :-) There was also a room overlooking the large parking lot that mimicked a control tower at an airport, where you could hear the actual transmissions from the control tower nearby (the museum is located on or near a regional airport, not the international SEA-TAC).

There was so much more than what's in these photos. We didn't even visit one whole wing dedicated to Boeing company. Top left photo is of the convertible plane car (yes, it could both drive on roads and fly), invented in the 1950s. It obviously never caught on -- only a few handfuls were ever built -- but it was a cool vehicle.

My five-year-old son B enjoyed the whole place very much. There was so much for him to see and do. After learning about the solar system at preschool, he's now a pro at naming and recognizing all eight planets in our solar system as well as Pluto, in addition to knowing their relative sizes and distance in order from the sun. Plus he loves planes and vehicles like his engineer dad. I'd love for him to be a scientist-astronaut!

A mother can dream, right?

Randomly, I had to have my husband take a pic of the lovely mannequin in the pic below. We had no idea why she was in this particular exhibit, "Early Days of Airmail," nor why her back was turned to the viewers, but I thought her outfit was awesome, even from the back.

Loved the cloche hat and her fur stole.

Here are a couple last photos from our trip: a visit to a Cow Chips, a cookie shop that my husband last visited as a child (good cookies), and the requisite visit to the waterfront (we didn't eat at Ivar's, but we liked how the sign in the window says "KEEP CLAM").

Good spot to people watch

Just being neighborly on a rainy Seattle day

Have a happy Monday. Thanks so much for reading!

xo, Gladys