Scattered Thoughts . . .

During our recent visit to the US Air Force Museum, Kenzie and Lukey were able to participate in a few space activities.  The Air Force has always been an integral part of the US Space Program and that is abundantly visible at the US Air Force Museum.  The museum has rockets used for launching space missions, the progression of space capsules, space suits, launch pads, simulators, as well as artifacts from different missions including artifacts collected from the moon,  Kenzie and Lukey had an opportunity to get up close and personal with a real space suit and to step into one of these big, heavy suits.  They didn't get to actually wear the suit but they were able to step into the suit from behind.   In the photo below, we have Mission Specialist Mackenzie and Mission Specialist Lukas on a tethered space walk.  They are captured floating in space while completing their mission to repair a solar array while at the ISS...  Earth is 254 miles beneat...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I shot approximately 2000 photos on our last trip to Dayton. Most of the places we visited were very unlike anything we can find in Vermont... a nice zoo, a large aquarium, a tremendous model railroad at a place called EnterTrainment, an historical Ohio village, the US Air Force Museum, the Wright brothers' family history including their homes and businesses, and an amazing airshow. It was nice for a younger Adam and a younger Liza to see what we saw on this trip.   I have a lot of beautiful photos from that long journey to Ohio and back but many of my favorites are from the US Air Force Museum. One in particular is pretty cool and worth mentioning... and is probably my favorite of the bunch... The Air Force Museum is broken down by "era" spread throughout four immense hangars... ie, the early years of aviation, WWI, barnstorming, WWII, etc. They even have a separate silo hangar dedicated to housing missiles nestled between two of th...

While the grandchildren were with us on Sunday, they spent some time putting together a big puzzle of the United States (never to be erroneously referred to as "America"...  more on this pet peeve of mine in a future blog entry) with Gee.  As they searched for where to place each state, Gee would tell them about the state and what we have done there while visiting that state. When they came to Ohio and were trying to figure out where it belongs, Gee explained to them that this is where we brought Mommy and Uncle Adam... that we saw airplanes, animals in a zoo, an aquarium and a number of other places. They were animated and excited while hearing about the trip to Dayton so I thought it would be the perfect time to show them the photos from that trip, except... I quickly remembered that all those photos were on an old external hard drive and not in an album online. There was no way I could get at these photos quickly. I promised them that I would dig out these photos so t...