Local Attraction

You will often hear people make comments like, "I lived in Chicago for 10 years, and I never went to the Sears Tower," or "I lived in North Dakota for two years, and never went to see the World's Largest Buffalo." People often neglect local tourist attractions, believing that they can go to them anytime, and that they'll do so eventually. But many people move away never having visited local points of interest.

I am not one of those people. I make sure to take advantage of my location to see local places of interest. One such place I visited this weekend is the Hill Aerospace Museum, at Hill Air Force Base down in Roy, Utah. This museum is awesome (although you ladies may not agree - airplanes are manly).

The museum contains a plethora of planes, many of which you have heard of, such as the B-1, the C-130, and the F-16. My personal favorite was the SR-71, a high-altitude, high-speed photo reconnaissance plane. There's also a model of the Wright brothers' plane, the propellers on which actually functioned by pushing the plane, rather than pulling it like later propellers did. As such, the props were behind the pilot seat, rather than on the nose of the plane.

I also talked to the elderly volunteer that was patrolling the museum. He told me about the plane he flew in during his days in the military, and about a crash he was in in 1961 that was mentioned at one exhibit. There wasn't much of the plane left in the photo, but nobody was killed in the crash. He told me the mechanical reason for the crash, but I sure don't remember what it was. He was a loadmaster on the C-124 cargo jet, responsible for loading the cargo the right way. Improperly loaded gear can cause a plane to crash due to poor weight distribution. If you've ever rented a U-Haul, you know that they tell you to load 60% or so of the weight in the front of the truck. The same principle applies with cargo planes. In fact, its exactly the same.

I would definitely suggest that all local readers check out the Hill Aerospace Museum. Oh, and I forgot to mention...it's free!