Visit to Leesburg and the Air and Space Museum Annex

We headed to Leesburg, Virginia to visit Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Rob, Ben, Kira and Sean. We had made plans to go to the Air and Space Museum Annex that is located next to Dulles Airport and only about 10 minutes from their house. Lukas was very excited about going to see them and the plans.

Here are the kids standing over looking the exhibit area below.

Lukas (4), Ben (15), Kira (12) and Sean (9)

The first thing we did was go up to the observation tower. They stream the audio from the control tower and you can try and locate the planes they are talking to. It was 11am and we only saw one plane take off the entire time we were in the observation area. Evidently there isn't much air traffic at Dulles on Saturday mornings. All of our flights to Kazakhstan left in the afternoon or evening. You can see the North South runway in the upper part of the photo.


The exhibit area is huge. It is the size of several airport hangers. The exhibit covers the history of flight starting with the Wright Brothers. It has every kind of aircraft and space craft.



Here are some of the earliest aircraft.



THE ENOLA GAY


SHUTTLE ENTERPRISE


LUKAS AND A VERY IMPRESSIVE US MILITARY AIRCRAFT


RUSSIAN MIG


They have an area dedicated to simulators that you can ride and one that is interactive. There are 5 different rides. We went on the shuttle 3D ride.


Here is Lukas getting ready.

and the Simmons kids right behind him.


After spending a few hours at the museum we went to lunch and then back to Becca and Rob's house. Ben is on the high school baseball team and played on a travel team over the summer. He was kind enough to play a littel ball with Lukas. If Lukas plays ball I think he will be a DH because all he wants to do is hit.


PLAYING BALL WITH BEN