7-23-07 #1

If I'm going to keep this blog going, I guess I should start keeping up a little better. After spending a couple of days in Roanoke, Washington D.C. seemed to be the next place to hover for a while. I knew I wanted to see an Air and Space Museum, so I stayed out by the airport to visit the new annexation from the main museum in downtown D.C. This was a pretty neat hangar with everything from Wright Brothers to space shuttle. It's seems to be getting to the point that an indoor museum is going to have an I-Max theater, and this place is no exception. I saw "Fighter Pilot", a coverage of war games at one of the western Air Force bases with planes from Europe, Asia, and U.S. .... jets out the ying-yang. There's not enough room here for all the pictures I took, so I just picked these.
Later on in Washington, I headed out to the Bull Run historical park, from the War of Northern Aggression. I'd always thought that Manassas was one of the last battles of the war, but there were actually 2 separate battles. Bull Run is the name of the creek running through the area, and one of the more important features was this bridge. It was rebuilt after the war, due to the retreating forces having destroyed it. There's a time and place for burning your bridges. This is one of the original houses that the Union found a good site for building their monument to the dead. That's the rock spire on the right of the house. It still amazes me how many people were killed during that war.
I never got the urge to head down to the National Mall area especially after reading some brochures that recommended taking a taxi, using a bus, whatever, because there is very limited parking. Actually that was just another excuse to get out of town. If I had it to do over again I'd probably just skip D.C. and stay in Annapolis, Md. That's where I was off to next.