Summer 2013: Hill Aerospace Museum

Originally, we were going to go directly home from Island Park after the reunion, we stayed an extra week to go to my youngest cousin's wedding in Brigham City. We had most of a week before we needed to be there, so we decided to spend the week in Pocatello and then North Salt Lake. On our way from Pocatello to North Salt Lake, we stopped at the Hill Aerospace Museum. I remembered going there once as a teenager (the same weekend we drove down for the BYU vs Notre Dame game in about 1993) but I was shocked at how amazing the place was -- 100 times better than anything I remembered.

P-51 & B-17


I really enjoyed seeing the B-17. I had just finished reading the book "A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II", which told the story of a B-17 bomber crew that was shot to pieces on their first mission to Germany and then received an escort from a particularly chivalrous German fighter ace. You think of B17s as these massive airplanes, but they really weren't all that big and they seem so much more constrictive and vulnerable when you picture the members in the crew as described in the book.

Shark Teeth and Scott's missing teeth


Scott really liked the paint job on the P51, which had a full set of teeth. He had lost a tooth before the trip and then he bravely used a kleenex to grab his next loose tooth and yank it out. Last time, we had a question of whether the Tooth Fairy would come out to the forest to claim a tooth from under a camp pillow. This time, we had to wonder which currency the Tooth Fairy would choose if a Canadian lost a tooth while on vacation in the US. We should note that I lost our Canadian passports at the airport after our North Carolina trip, so we entered the US as US citizens, causing even more confusion for the Tooth Fairy, I'm sure.

Scott and the bomb


Scott is hilarious. Often I tell him something interesting and then he turns around and repeats it to his mom or Katie, even though they are standing right next to us and obviously heard the whole thing. This happened a lot at the museum. For example, I read the sign next to this bomb and then he regurgitated it to R.

Top Gun: F-14 Tomcat


We had to get a picture of the F-14 Tomcat. R and her sister J loooooved the move Top Gun when they were younger (apparently, it was also part of their Christmas Eve traditions to stay up late and watch it), so of course we had to pay homage to Maverick and Goose. I don't think the kids had any idea of the significance, but they thought all the planes were super-awesome.



The inside of the museum is made up of several huge hangars packed full of sweet planes. However, there are many more planes outside that are simply too enormous to try to park inside. Think of a plane (or a helicopter) that was ever awesome and chances are it is here. Free admission? We are definitely going back.