Sharp's Travels

This morning we went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, the home of Howard Hughes flying boat the “Spruce Goose”. The museum was located just down the road from our campground.

The museum houses over 80 historic aircraft, including rare war birds, aerobatic planes, gliders, and the world’s fastest spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird. The most impressive was the Spruce Goose. It is the largest wooden airplane with the longest wingspan ever, 319 feet six inches, with a length of 218 feet 8 inches and a weight of 400,000 lbs. The aircraft was designed to fly Trans Atlantic to avoid the World War II German submarines that were sinking allied ships.

It was completed in 1947 after the end of World War II. It made only 1 flight by Howard Hughes himself during a taxi test. It flew at an altitude of 70 feet for about 1 minute. After flying her Howard Hughes stored his flying boat away in a special hanger and out of the public eye for the next 33 years. After his death in 1976 the plane changed hands a number of times before being disassembled and brought to this museum. This building was built specifically for it and it takes up the entire length of the building. It dwarfs all the other planes in the museum. We got to go aboard the “Spruce Goose” into the cargo deck. It is a site. It is SO HUGE!

They also have the Spruce Goose Vineyards located next to the museum. You can sample wines made at their vineyard in the museum. We have seen miles and miles of vineyard fields here in Oregon. We didn’t know they were so big in the wine industry.

We came back to the 5th wheel and after lunch Gay worked on some of our florescent lights. They needed new diodes. He’s so handy!

We went to the 4:50pm show at the cinema. We saw “What Happens in Vegas”. It was a good show. We were home by 7pm.

Gay has uploaded pictures of the day. See album: Evergreen Aviation Museum