May 23, 2008

May 23, 2008

From Buck Creek, it is only twenty minutes to Dayton, OH and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. On the base is the awesome National Air Force Museum. We have been here before and you can easily spend all day here. Our goal is to revisit the early flight section. It is primarily about Orville and Wilbur Wright’s struggle to develop the first practical airplane. They had lots of competition, who were all ultimately unsuccessful. The Wright brothers, however, were dedicated, meticulous, and undeterred. They painstakingly worked out all the hurdles to design each necessary component: adequate lift, flight control, propellers, and a lightweight powerful engine. Then they had to teach themselves to fly and most importantly do it without killing themselves. We breeze through the rest of the museum only stopping to see the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. It ties in with our nuclear tour and with a book both of us read last fall about the aircrew’s story.

After the museum we drive to the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park, Huffman Prairie Visitor Center on the other side of the base. There we watch an interesting movie about the Wright Brothers and then explore the exhibits. The highlight is a flight simulator for the 1905 Wright Flyer III. Aimee enjoys watching me crash the plane three times. The controls were very touchy. We then drive to Huffman Prairie in the center of the base. It is the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers perfected the airplane from 1904-1905. It must have been shocking for the local farmers to see a noisy machine circling above for the very first time in history.

Leaving Wright-Patterson AFB, we head into downtown Dayton to see the bicycle shop where the brothers first started their tinkering. Just before rush hour we head out of Dayton and rejoin the National Road route west. We cross the border into Indiana and get the last spot at a very crowded private campground.