Hill Aerospace Museum

This past week was spring break for my kids.  We wanted to do something fun, go somewhere...warm, like St. George, but with all the birthday celebrating and Easter plans it just didn't happen.  To make up for a non-trip Corey suggested we take the kids to the Hill Aerospace Museum. It's in Roy, Utah which is just a few miles south of Ogden, so it's a bit of a drive, but totally worth it, and the museum is free although they gladly take donations.  
When you drive in you're surrounded by huge airplanes.  They're right there on the grounds and there are a lot of them.  The museum itself is made up of two big buildings full of old and new planes with videos and plaques to tell you all about them.  It was so fun watching my kids run from plane to plane, in awe of it all while Corey and I followed behind, him showing me all of his old favorites and which one's he and his brother made models of when they were little. 
There was even a "kid's museum" within the big one that was geared to kids, they could touch everything and there were volunteers there to teach them about airplanes and physics.   They got dressed up in costumes and pretended to fly airplanes in old simulators. 

One of my favorite parts was an exhibit on  "WASP" or "Women's Air force Service Pilots."   They were an amazing group of women who flew combat planes in WWII.  They didn't actually fly in combat, but did a lot of other really important things like test-pilot aircraft, and take supplies into men on the front line.  The story I liked best about them is when Boeing made the B29 bomber their head test pilot was killed on the first run of it.  That didn't sit well with any of the other pilots and no one would fly it.  The engineer was getting frustrated because he knew we needed that plane in the war effort so he took two of the WASP women and taught them how to fly it.  He spoke so highly of them and their willingness to help and about how capable they were.  Then they took a group of men and brought them out to look at the airplane and there were those two women suited up and ready to go.  One of the men asked.."what's this here?" referring to the women and the engineer replied "these are the two women that are going to teach you how to fly this plane."  Of course they all went and the war was greatly impacted by the use of the B29 bomber. Such amazing and inspirational women. 

For any of you who haven't gone, I would highly recommend it.  It was amazing.