Flying high and the boneyard…Tucson and further East
Mike really wanted to go the Pima Air and Space Museum, so for our last side trip we picked the hottest day yet and headed there..93°…and dry as..well a desert. The RV Park had given us some left over Coupon books which was very nice, buy one ticket get the 2nd free, very nice so we signed up for the Graveyard tour as well as wandering around looking at the planes. I have to admit I know absolutely nothing about planes..boats, well, that is another story but these flying things never had much space in my childhood..Mike on the other hand knows the names, the wars..yup..all that fun stuff so I was just along for the ride:) Although all those signs..DANGER…RESCUE…don’t put me at ease;) and then I started to see the pin-up girls…so THAT is why he likes planes;)
The planes were actually quite impressive, even I can enjoy a shiny bit of aluminum and can recognize a hot rod plane when I see it…I’ll take the P51 Mustang please:)…but perhaps the Petulant porpoise would be safer;)
Nothing like the smell of musty old planes either..the WW2 hangers needed a bit more ventilation..I can take the motor smell but the the mildew..not so nice.We ended up roaming about outside after the last musty hangar. Now these were some big planes!
B36 from the shade of a wing
We had a few flyovers while we broiled outside touring the big planes. The Boneyard Project was very cool-incredibly painted jets..
The thing that interested me the most was the boneyard tour. We’d seen a Desert Speaks program on it and it looked like it could be fascinating…it was dreadfully depressing. It was quite late in the day when we climbed onto the Greyhound bus for the tour.
Great bus, great tour and so much information but the miles and miles of planes and pieces and bombs and left over missiles (6000 planes) was a statement to the waste of war..sure they are recycling some of them, to sell to our “allies” at a reduced rate no doubt, given they sold them our outdated planes to begin with. I left feeling horribly sad. The war machine and the dollars it consumes, from the pockets of the many to the pockets of the few, the mega corporations, that is what keeps America from truly being what it set out to be, a long forgotten ideal, one I remembered as a child when the US still had a modicum of dignity, before it became what it was fighting against..aggression..now the aggressor.
I had blocked this out of my mind for awhile until Mike asked me yesterday, what about all the plane pictures so I decided to tackle it this morning before we head back West. It still leaves me feeling uneasy but you be the judge..go see for yourself:)