East Coast USA

[iainpeden]

I'm sitting on a heater at Washington Dulles with two hours to kill before I can even check in for the flight home so I'll do a quick resume of my trip and bore you with the pictures once home.
Flew out Birmingham to Dublin to Dulles with Aer Lingus; three advantages, first it's an hour from home, second it's cheaper than direct from Heathrow and US immigration is done at Dublin and took about 5 minutes including security so no immigration or customs at Dulles.
Next morning collected the car and spent 6 hours at Udvar-Hazy, then braved the Washington beltway to Bowie. From there, day one was the AMC museum at Dover, day two was the USN museum at PaxRiver- which gave me my fill of light gull gray and white aeroplanes. Then the beltway to Front Royal. Next day, 400 miles to Columbus to overnight then 90 miles/90 minutes to Dayton to the USAF museum. Arrived at 9 and left at 5 both days ( you need 3 to really do it.)
Dayton to Lexington (Virginia), had a tour (individual thanks to my English accent) of Stonewall Jacksons house, then a drive to Manassass/Bull Run (depending on which side you're on).overnight.
4 more hours this morning at Udvar-Hazy and back to the airport.
I've seen the Valkyrie, B-45, EnolaGay and Bockscar, a number of X-planes and spoken to some highly knowledgeable and interesting volunteers (in American, docents).
All for less than a flight in a Spitfire when I would have been airsick anyway.

[Blackbird]

Thanks for the resume Ian. Looking forward to the photos.