Our RV Adventures

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Union Station 1

Union Station 2

Union Station 3

We had come back here to take the DC Duck tour.

It’s a 90 minute tour, one hour on land and 30 minutes on the Potomac River.  We traveled in a WWII DUKW amphibious vehicle, or Duck.

Duck 1

We had a great time on this tour.  We saw a number of places we didn’t see on the other tour, and a different view (from the river) of others.

While still on land we did get a better view of the Jefferson Memorial.

Jefferson Memorial

When it was time for us to hit the water, we just drove down a boat ramp on the Potomac River and off we went.   Neat !!

Duck 2

I want one.

We also got a river view of the Pentagon.  This is the opposite side from where the plane hit on 9/11.

Pentagon from the Potomac

We passed under the 14 St. bridges where  the Air Florida 737 took off Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan – Washington National), fell out of the sky, bounced off the bridge, and crashed into the freezing Potomac on January 13, 1982.

The bridge was later renamed the ‘Arland D. Williams Jr’  bridge after one of the plane’s passengers who repeatedly helped others to safety until he died in the frigid water.

78 people died, including 4 whose cars were crushed when the plane hit the bridge.  Only five passengers survived.

From the river we also got a unique shot of two famous monuments in one, The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.

Two Monuments in One

Duck 3

We pulled back into Union Station about 2:45.  We then realized that we really wouldn’t have time to do two, or even one of the museums,  justice.

So we decided to eat supper at Union Station and head home early to miss the ‘going home’ rush on the Metro.

We’ll try the museums again tomorrow.

Well, we braved the DC Metro Rail line, and survived.

We started out with breakfast at the Silver Diner, a place we had noticed right down the road from our RV park.

Silver Diner

It looks like one of those old-fashioned roadside diners that looked like it was made out of stainless steel.  It even had the jukebox music selectors at each table.  And the food was very good.  We will probably eat there again some morning.

We then drove over to the Vienna/ Fairfax Metro Station and caught the Orange line into Metro Center, switched to the Red line (that’s the one that killed 9 people a couple of weeks ago) and ended up at Union Station.

Union Station, built in 1908 and remodeled several times, is very impressive.  Besides having 3 levels of train tracks, it’s pretty much a shopping mall inside, with shops, restaurants, hotels, and tour agencies.

Union Station

Union Station at Dusk

Union Station Interior

We ended up at Union Station because we wanted to take another Old Town Tolley Tour, like we did in Key West,  St. Augustine, and Savannah.  We plan on completing our set by taking their other tours in Boston and San Diego as we travel.

So we did the tourist thing, seeing all the usual sights…

The U.S. Capitol,

US Capitol

 The White House,

White House

 The Washington Monument,

Washington Monument

The Lincoln Memorial, 

Lincoln Memorial

The Supreme Court, 

Supreme Court

The National Archives, where the original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other famous documents are stored. 

National Archives

After we made the tour bus loop, we rode it back around and got off at the National Air & Space Museum, the other side of the Udar-Hazy Center that we visited the other day.

We got to see a lot more ‘original’ planes and space vehicles this time.  But the next picture isn’t one of those.

Below is a mockup of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander as it sat on the moon.

Apollo11

This is a mockup of the Hubble Telescope.  The Shuttle just finished up a repair mission that should keep it working for a few more years. 

Hubble Telescope

This is the M2-F3 Lifting Body.  One like this is what you saw crashing at the beginning of the ‘6 Million Dollar Man’ TV show.  There was a pilot inside that ship and he survived, and they didn’t have to put him back together with bionics, either. 

M2-F3 Lifting Body

This is the real thing.  It’s Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One that won the $10 million X prize in 2004 for being the first private ship to make it into space.

Spaceship One

This is Chuck Yeager’s X-1 rocket plane that he piloted to break the sound barrier for the first time in history. 

X-1

This is the X-15 rocket plane, the world’s fastest and highest flying aircraft, at Mach 6.72 (4534 mph)  and  67 mile high.

X-15

This is the original Apollo 11 Command Module that the astronauts used to return from the moon. 

Apollo11 Command Module

This is the German Me-262 jet fighter.  It was the first really operational jet fighter.  There aren’t too many of these left. 

Me262

This is another item I have personal experience with.  It’s a GE J79 jet engine.  I spent a lot of time pulling these things out of and putting them back in F-4 Phantoms at Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, SC. 

J-79 Engine

This is the Ford Tri-Motor.  Who know Ford used to built aircraft?  Although these started flying in 1928, they were still flying them in South America when we lived there in the early 1960’s.  The ones we flew on down there only had 2 engines, not 3.  The center engine had been removed and the two wing-mounted engines had been replaced with more powerful ones from the DC-3s. 

Ford Tri-Motor

This is another plane I worked on.  It’s an A-4 Skyhawk, except mine were for the Marine Corps, not the Navy. 

A4

This is Charles Lindbergh’s original ‘Spirit of St. Louis’, in which he made the first solo, non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927.  For this, he won $25,000.

Spirit of St. Louis

This is Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega that she used to make several record-setting flights, before she left on her ill-fated flight in her Lockheed Electra in 1937. 

Lockheed Vega

This is the original 1903 Wright Flyer that the Wright brothers used to make the first sucessful powered flights in 1903.  The one we saw at Kitty Hawk a few weeks ago was a replica. 

1903 Wright Flyer

This is a Tomahawk cruise missile. It can be launched from plane, a ship, or a submarine, travel over 1500 miles, and then fly through the exact window you aimed for.

Tomahawk

This is a Predator UAV complete with Hellfire missiles.  These are being used in Iraq,  Afghanistan, and Pakistan today.

Predator UAV

This is Voyager. Designed by Burt Rutan, and flown by his brother, Dick, and Jeana Yeager, in 1986 it was the first plane to fly around the world in 9 days without refueling or stopping.

Voyager

And, of course, what spaceship display is complete without the NCC-1701, the Starship Enterprise. This is the original model used in the ‘Star Trek’ TV show in 1966-1969. 

NCC-1701

Tomorrow Jan and I plan to see the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History.

Another fun trip on Metro Rail…