Thunderbird Museum

Another part of our vacation included visiting the Thunderbird Museum on base. The Thunderbirds are the Air Force show planes that tour the country and put on stunt shows. It's fun that we get to watch them practice in our backyard.  This exhibit scared us when Izzy decided to touch it and it flipped upside down.  At first we thought she broke it, but it was part of the fun.

 We had fun walking around the museum.  It didn't have much, but lots of cool artwork of he planes.  We each picked out our favorite piece of art.

 They also had free handouts including coloring books and stickers for the kids and a nice poster.  We then went outside and were about to leave, but wanted to see if we could see the planes parked on the runway.  

We then came to this sign and thought we couldn't go further but one of the guys working there invited us in where we were directed to some bleachers to watch the show.  

They were practicing their preshow which involves all the pilots, crew chiefs, and other workers for prepping the pilots for their flight.  They gave fancy high 5s in the lines instead of salutes, then ... I don't really know how to explain it but it was cool to watch the 5 different planes were getting prepared for takeoff at the same exact time with the same motions etc.  It was fun to watch.  

Then we watched the planes taxi off the strip down to who knows where thinking they were getting ready to take off.  The kids refused to put earplugs in, but we got Calvin to keep his in.

 

They didn't take off and started taxiing to another runway, we decided they were just practicing their driving?  As we're in the parking lot, we finally saw them fly overhead, but by then we were ready to hit the bowling alley.  We finally visited the Thunderbird Museum.