Yesterday we met up with my mom Elin and step-dad Al to visit the Heritage Flight Museum.  We first went to Shawn O’Donnell’s American Grill and Irish Pub for lunch.  They had really good food.  Then we headed to the museum by the Skagit Regional Airport.  The first thing I saw was the Huey helicopter like the ones Al flew in as an Army photographer in the Vietnam War.  He would sit near where the yellow emblem is to take photographs of the war.

Then we went inside to the exhibit.  It first described the year 1968 and its interactions with the Apollo mission.  I learned about the Astrobeagle.

And the amazing women behind the mission.  This is mathematician Katharine Johnson calculating trajectories for the milestone flights of the space program from 1953 to 1986.

And this is Margaret Hamilton who created the code that ran the LM and CM onboard flight software.

Then they had a replica of the Apollo 8 landing capsule.

The Apollo 8 mission was remarkable in that it was the first time humans saw the dark side of the moon.  Each of the astronauts were able to name a crater there.

Here are the other firsts of the mission.

Here is a decription of the recovery.  It was much more challenging than I imagined.

And here is a description of the longterm impact the first photograph of the earth rising had on the environmental movement.

This is a chronology of the life of Bill Anders, one of the three astronauts of the mission and the founder of this museum.  He unfortunately died in an airplane crash locally last December at the age of 90.

And here are the planes in the museum.  I should know more about these given my many trips to airshows and watching slideshows of other airshows throughout my childhood with my grandfather, but unfortunately it didn’t stick very well.  He would have loved this museum though.  And would have had all kinds of informations about these planes.

Here is a Bell helicopter.  It turns out Al would ride in these as well during his tour of Vietnam (February 1967- February 1968).  He said he liked this one better as it was just him and the pilot, and he could see out better.

We saw this plane fly at the airshow in June.

This engine is very similar to the engine from my grandfather’s plane that my uncle just brought back to Pennsylvania to be refurbished.  Pretty fun to see it in the museum.

Here is an Allison engine.  I am guessing that these are the engines I grew up listening to in hydroplane races.

And here are descriptions of the planes from the museum’s pamphlet.

I am glad we were finally able to go to this museum just a few short miles away.  We had planned to go last year, but I think it was the bomb cyclone that interrupted that trip and then Al had his fall.  So nice to check this off the bucket list.