The Museum of Flight - Renton, WA

Wednesday 8/5/09 Another kind of work day today - WalMart for groceries & stuff, Fred Meyers for real groceries, check out where Costco is for a later Costco run and polish dog for Will, wash clothes and clean the RV - that's a full days work. And of course with no full hook ups we are on water rationing, meaning how little water "black or gray water" we can get by with. The weather seems to be getting grayer and colder here in Washington and we are so glad we have already seen Mt. Rainier in beautiful weather.

Thursday 8/6/09 Another dreary day in Washington, honestly I don't know how these people live here, of course when you talk with them, they are just grateful it isn't HOT. All I know is when I read the Fresno temp in the paper at night & it is in the 90's....I get real homesick!! But it is beautiful here and I know I don't have to live here forever.

We have met some real nice neighbors, Kay and Jim from Temecula, CA who are parked right across the way from us. Fortunately, being from CA also they find this weather too cold ....at least Kay does - it's not just us. After visiting for sometime we decide to all go & tour the Lakewold Gardens, Lakewood, WA www.lakewold.org billed as a World-Class Garden Estate. As for me, after visiting Butchard Gardens I can't imagine anything coming close to that (and I was right!) We take their Vue Saturn & head out. It is a 10 acre estate that was established in 1904 and the old home and gardens have been preserved. It has a wonderful history and is laid out beautifully but I was disappointed, as there were very few flowers blooming (almost none) and they are having trouble with the Knot gardens ??? (plants not growing) but the lake and surrounding homes were gorgeous to look at. We walked through the house, along the paths of the gardens which are comprised mostly of many different kind of trees, a water feature, a tea house, a formal pool and then out to the garden & gift shop. It was a nice afternoon, with fun people and it had a cheap entry price and now it's time to hurry home because it pot luck night at the clubhouse.

The bulletin says to bring "your Mama's favorite" so I do just that....just what Mama/Mimi would have done, go to the store & buy a container of potato salad, put it in MY bowl and "doctor" it up....it's certainly better than anything I could make. The four of us head over, Kay with a casserole she has cooked and me with Mama's potato salad. It was a small group but a nice selection of food. Kay commented that in California the table would be loaded with salads, but here there was not one green salad.....mostly carb foods. But it was tastee and the people were nice and we learned more about Boeing as several of the people worked there.

Friday 8/7/09 On the advice of one of the Boeing people last night, at the potluck dinner, we decide to go and see The Museum of Flight www.museumofflight.org located in Renton, WA across the street from another Boeing plant here in Washington. Oh my gosh, what a treat, the place opened at 10 am and we got there at 11 am and they had to kick us out at 5 pm as they were closing. Even with that amount of time we still don't feel like we got to see everything we wanted to....or at least take as much time at exhibits as we could have.

The museum is a beautiful large glass building that is divided up in sections with different exhibits. The Great Gallery - has planes suspended from the ceiling & planes & exhibits all around the floor area, they also have an area displaying "space stuff" such as Apollo Lunar Module, a space capsule, moon rocks & so much more. The Personal Courage Wing - on the ground floor is all about World War II and the upstairs is about World War I. The Red Barn/William E Boeing wing is a very early Boeing shop when airplanes were made out of wood. Lots of pictures, machinery and displays that are not to be believed. Outside located in the Airpark is a Concorde and Air Force One airplane that JFK rode on. These airplanes you can actually tour through...all tho the lines were to long for the Air Force One so we only went through the Concorde. They have docents (all volunteers) that gave guided tours every hour on the hour and we joined in on several of these and loved all the fascinating stories. Outside located around the building they had many Navy, Air Force & Army fighter planes displayed.

The actual museum is located right on a runway so we bought our lunch today, sat in the restaurant & watched many different types of planes taking off & landing. They also offered airplane rides in a Biplane...an old red & yellow open seat airplane. I wanted desperately for us to take a ride in one of these planes but Will, after seeing the cost, wanted no part of it. Flight time - 15 minutes is a ride to the Space Needle-Elliott Bay and back - $135 they had 7 different routes with the most expensive being $549 for 1 1/2 hours..it was called the Big Tamale for all 6 routes. That really was a lot of money and I'm sure he was right....but still....it would have been fun. Anyway, as Tony the Tiger would say, it was a grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat day!!! But boy were we exhausted, all those hours on our feet and poor Wills back was sure feeling it. We headed home and could hardly wait to fall into bed that evening. I sure hope you get a chance to look thru their web site and get a glimpse of what this place is like.....Rog & Joe you would have LOVED IT!! Speaking of Rog...congratulations to Rog and Patty as they have a brand new grand baby boy, Benjamin....a new Chicago Cubbies fan has arrived.

Saturday 8/8/09 This is an eating RV park...this morning is scrambled eggs, sausage (yum-yum) oj, all the pancakes you can eat (watch out) and coffee...all for $4 and served on the outside deck overlooking beautiful Lake Sawyer....this picture would be perfect if it wasn't so darn cold but we head on down at the appointed hour - 8:30 am. They even offer a spinning wheel that you can spin with 2 chances for a free breakfast...we didn't get it but the breakfast & company was good so who can complain. A lazy afternoon as I go into the town of Covington, WA and treat myself to a pedicure and boy is that a treat. Wash a few clothes, eat dinner, work on the blog and that's another day of our adventure. For all those who have sent emails and I have not answered, I'm sorry...the computer is just not working very well and I have a very small window of time I can be on it so have tried to keep the blog up to date. Hopefully, real soon I can get it looked at. Signing off with much love to all our family and friends.