A few weeks ago, we took a day trip to the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robbins, Georgia, which is the second largest museum in the United States Air Force. This was very exciting for my boys who have learned a great deal about military aircraft in their digital games and for my husband, who is a historian and a kid at heart. In our house, this is definitely a boy thing. They watch YouTube videos about this stuff quite often.
But I enjoyed the museum too because my father is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who served in Vietnam, and I got to see a few of the many aircraft he flew at the museum, including the C-141 that you see above and below.
And this B-52 that I couldn’t even get into the whole frame:
We also saw the B-17, which was in pieces, but we weren’t able to see the B-57 because it was off display for repairs.
Those are just a few aircraft my dad flew, but the museum has a countless amount of other aircraft. The museum sits on 51 acres, and there are four large buildings housing more aircraft, exhibits with historical artifacts, uniforms, fun things for kids, and much more. If you live in Georgia, it’s a must-see museum.
The website is great too. There’s a lot of information on it, including a list of all the aircraft they have. You can click on each aircraft name, and it will take you to a page with a gallery of photos and information about that aircraft.
I’m sure we’ll be going back to this museum in the future, especially as we get into American history, particularly WWI and WWII. There was just so much to see and learn about.
In May, we took a trip out west. We weren’t expecting to undertake such a big trip this year, but we often mused about taking the boys out west. Then, my sister asked us when we were coming for a visit…she and her family live near Denver, Colorado. That was the push we needed to get us on the road.
It was the longest road trip we’ve ever taken, so we weren’t sure how anyone would behave (most of all, the adults!). But we made it almost-painlessly on the two day drive to New Mexico, which was our first destination.
New Mexico
I used to live out west, but seeing it with my children was like seeing it for the first time again. The boys were thrilled to see the desert landscape, pronghorn antelope, a horny toad, and my 10-year-old was even lucky enough to get a glimpse of elk while we were driving! They were familiar with these animals from all the documentaries we watch, and especially Wild Kratts, so seeing them in person was very exciting! We (especially me!) were also thrilled to identify some birds that don’t live in Georgia — grackles, ravens, magpies, etc. It was so much fun!
Santa Fe, New Mexico
We spent a couple of days in Santa Fe, which I’d always wanted to spend more time in, and so did my husband. It’s a beautiful, artsy, touristy town with a lot of history. We spent an afternoon looking through the art galleries, and I thought the boys might get bored there, but they enjoyed that! My seven-year-old said he had fun because he “saw many things I liked!” The only place they did get a little bored in was the Georgia O’Keefe Museum, but I enjoyed that.
Oldest church ever built in the U.S.A. It was built by the Tlaxcalan Indians under the direction of Franciscan Padres, circa 1610.
The second day in Santa Fe, we headed a short distance out of town to see Bandelier National Monument, and this was perhaps our favorite site to see. We took what was at least a 2-mile hike through a beautiful landscape that was quite different from home. This hike ended at some incredible Pueblo ruins. I had never even seen anything like that before. (We bought some books about the Pueblo Indians at the visitor center, which I’m reading to my boys now!)
“Tyuonyi (pronounced Qu-weh-nee) is a free standing pueblo from the 14th century built in an unusual circular shape in Frijoles Canyon midway between Frijoles Creek and the north canyon face. Two and perhaps three stories high in some places this village housed about 100 people in 400 rooms and was constructed of carefully shaped tuff blocks cut from the canyon walls. There was a single ground-level entrance and a plaza area that had three small kivas which served as the center for social village ceremonial life.”My boys viewing the Pueblo ruins at Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico.a kiva
After Santa Fe, we drove up to Denver and spent four days at my sister’s house. My grown-up niece and nephews stopped by to see us too, so my boys got to meet their cousins, which was great. There was a big snowstorm in the area when we arrived, which kept us from going farther north. But since we were tired from traveling, it was nice to stay around my sister’s area, enjoy the mountain view from a local park, and go to the pool at her gym.
Approaching the snowstorm.View from Bluffs Regional Park. Overlooking Denver and suburbs.
After our time in Denver, we headed south again, but this time we went to Albuquerque. We were there for just one day, but we packed a lot in. We went to the Indian Cultural Arts Center, Petroglyph National Monument, and Old Town Albuquerque for dinner and a bit of shopping.
Indian Cultural Arts Center
This was an incredibly educational trip. The Indian Cultural Arts Center was a fascinating place, and I read most of the exhibits to my boys, which were full of stories and inspiring messages from various Pueblo cultures. The museum is owned and operated by the 19 Pueblo tribes that are located in New Mexico.
I had seen petroglyphs before, but I had never seen as many as I saw at Petroglyph National Monument. The petroglyphs are carved into large basalt boulders, ancient volcanic rock that had once flowed around a hill, but now the hill has eroded away. This is called reverse or inverted topography, and the canyon that is left behind is called Boca Negra Canyon.
This trip created memories that will last a lifetime, and we’re so glad we took the plunge and went.
Do you have any special trip plans for this summer? I would love to hear about them.
Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal in October 2015.
If you have young children, they may not be old enough to appreciate Georgia’s history or the beautiful homes you can tour along the Antebellum Trail, but you may be able to sneak some of that in on a day trip to the Natural History Museum at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. Our boys love fossils, so we spent a long time in this small museum, and then we enjoyed exploring the beautiful campus and viewed some of the historical buildings too.
The Natural History Museum is only a 2,500-square-foot room in Herty Hall, but it is jam-packed with fossils and exhibits that will teach you about ancient life forms. Georgia College holds one of the largest repositories of fossils in the southeast, covering the last 500 million years, and it’s the official repository for National Park Service specimens too. Though small, there’s still enough to keep you busy for well over an hour as you slowly make your way around the room.
My boys are excited about seeing any kind of fossil or bones, but some of the highlights were the large cephalopods, a crinoid and trilobites. There was a fossil of a large amphibian from the late Triassic found in Poland that looked similar to an alligator’s head. The fossil of a dinosaur egg was pretty cool, and a skeleton of a Smilodon, or saber-toothed cat, was a favorite.
After the museum, we walked to the Ennis Hall, the Department of Art, hoping to check out an art exhibit, but at that time, they were between art shows. We still had fun checking out the beautiful, old antebellum buildings that have been turned into office buildings and classroom space. The main part of campus has a large green area with beautiful trees to walk under.
We stopped by the Old Governor’s Mansion, which was the home of eight governors, their families, slaves and free servants from 1839-1868 when Milledgeville was the state capital of Georgia. (The capital moved to Atlanta in 1868 due to Atlanta’s superior rail service.) During the Civil War, General William T. Sherman’s army captured the mansion, and it served as his headquarters. Now it’s a museum, and you can take tours there too, but we didn’t think our young boys would be patient enough for that, so we just enjoyed walking around the block and checking out the gardens.
Downtown Milledgeville is also within walking distance. It’s quaint, and it has plenty of shops to peruse. We found some old comic books in an antique store that has kick started my nine-year-old’s enjoyment of reading silently to himself. (Score!) We even found a restaurant that served food my picky eaters would eat too.
Since it’s only two hours away, Milledgeville makes a lovely day trip. You can go for the fossils, or the history, or just a lovely stroll down some beautiful streets.
Find out more about the natural history museum at this website: http://www.gcsu.edu/nhm. It’s free and open to the public from 8a.m. to 4p.m. Monday through Friday. There is free 2-hour parking outside the building, which will give you plenty of time to see the exhibits. Large groups can make reservations for a tour.
Mama of Letters 