R
Rutus
This is probably well known already to a lot of folks, but a nice day trip is a visit to the Tillamook Air Museum, located right on the field at Tillamook, OR (KTMK). The field is an old Naval Air Station and the museum is housed in a huge blimp hangar built for coastal patrol blimps in WW2. Lots of great planes, and - almost as good - many really interesting period exhibits of radio and navigation gear, uniforms, other accessories/hardware, and some good writeups of the WAVES, WASPS, Tuskegee Airmen, and famous WW2 pilots from Oregon (Marion Carl, Rex Barber, Ken Jernstedt . . .) I've flown over the Hood River airport many times and saw it was named Ken Jernstedt field - now I see Ken was a member of the AVG (something I probably had read somewhere in years past but had not made the connection). Lots of information right here: http://www.tillamookair.com
Yesterday, the weather here in the Pacific Northwest was pretty nice for February, so Emma and I headed to Bremerton, preflighted, and were off by 1030. One hour to Tillamook, via Ilwaco and then down the Oregon coastline (hard to beat that natural beauty), and an easy approach into "The Land of Trees, Cheese and Ocean Breeze!" - as I recall a welcome sign on the highway from years back. You can taxi right up to the north end of Rwy 1 and follow the taxiway to the back of the museum. And, finding the airport is easy - Tillamook itself is situated in a little bowl where the coastal mountains give way to Tillamook Bay and the coastline; the airport is on the southeast side of town, and the enormous building with AIR MUSEUM painted on it is visible from about 5 miles away.
The museum has a very well stocked gift shop, a nice little restaurant/cafe, helpful staff, 1940s period music playing at a nice discrete level, plus Allisons, Merlins, a Griffon, corncobs, R-2800s, WW2 jeeps, an F-14, Mig-17, and F-8 for you jet fans, cockpit trainers from various early jets that you can hop in an try out, some bodaciously beautiful nose art on a Lockheed P2V Neptune. . . . its all good.
After lunch, a tour of the museum, and a gift shop stop, we launched back for Bremerton and had some nice tailwinds giving us 175+ kts over the ground with throttle to spare, and touched back down in less that an hour.
Highly recommended if you've not been there yet - I think Emma's twin sister Grace is now going to want to go for a visit. Guess I'll just have to be a good father and make the sacrifice to head back a second time . . .
Yesterday, the weather here in the Pacific Northwest was pretty nice for February, so Emma and I headed to Bremerton, preflighted, and were off by 1030. One hour to Tillamook, via Ilwaco and then down the Oregon coastline (hard to beat that natural beauty), and an easy approach into "The Land of Trees, Cheese and Ocean Breeze!" - as I recall a welcome sign on the highway from years back. You can taxi right up to the north end of Rwy 1 and follow the taxiway to the back of the museum. And, finding the airport is easy - Tillamook itself is situated in a little bowl where the coastal mountains give way to Tillamook Bay and the coastline; the airport is on the southeast side of town, and the enormous building with AIR MUSEUM painted on it is visible from about 5 miles away.
The museum has a very well stocked gift shop, a nice little restaurant/cafe, helpful staff, 1940s period music playing at a nice discrete level, plus Allisons, Merlins, a Griffon, corncobs, R-2800s, WW2 jeeps, an F-14, Mig-17, and F-8 for you jet fans, cockpit trainers from various early jets that you can hop in an try out, some bodaciously beautiful nose art on a Lockheed P2V Neptune. . . . its all good.
After lunch, a tour of the museum, and a gift shop stop, we launched back for Bremerton and had some nice tailwinds giving us 175+ kts over the ground with throttle to spare, and touched back down in less that an hour.
Highly recommended if you've not been there yet - I think Emma's twin sister Grace is now going to want to go for a visit. Guess I'll just have to be a good father and make the sacrifice to head back a second time . . .
