We went to see the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo at the beginning of October and it was really cool! They had everything on display ranging from huge engine pieces, restoration jobs, declassified stealth planes, and a bunch of other exhibits. For a smaller museum, it was packed full of things and they had two buildings. We went with K2 and J and the boys had a blast (no pun intended) wandering through the museum.
The helicopter below was climbable for kids and I will admit to debating with K2 if I was short enough to qualify! Sadly, there were actual kids there, so I had to be good.
These are resorted planes from WW2. It was cool to see the stories behind the nose cone art.
I appreciated being able to read the pilot stories too. They had a wedding dress that was made from parachute silk of someone who had been shot down. It was beautiful!
They didn’t just have planes there either. This is a rocket engine. 5 of these power a rocket! Can you imagine?! I’m pretty sure we all could have fit underneath it.
It was super neat to see the restoration work going on. They had a declassified plane and two planes that they had recovered from Lake Michigan on display. The two downed looked really good for having been dragged from the bottom of the lake. The silver plane is one of the Lake Michigan planes and then black one is the declassified one. The green one was also a wreck somewhere, but I don’t remember where it was from.
They had a lot of exhibits about different war time things as well. The WASPs were featured. Sue Parish was one of the founders of the museum actually. She had a pink flight suit! My camera was done by this time, so I think K2 has the end of the pictures for the museum.
They also had a Willow Run exhibit, which was cool. My Dad told me that my Grandma Florence worked there, which I either hadn’t known, or had forgotten. I knew all four of my grandparents were involved in the war somehow, but not entirely how.
This was the Husband’s favorite part, I think, although it was super hard to get pictures of because I am very little and it was not. It is an SR- 71 B Blackbird.
It was very interesting to learn about all the airplanes and fun stuff associated with them. They had a lot of hands on things to play with although we didn’t play with too many of them as there were a lot of germy children running around snotting on things. The amount of sneezing.. *shudders*
I really enjoyed it though and a lot of the exhibits were Michigan based, not surprisingly. I’ll leave you with some outside shots that I’m particularly proud of. I hope you enjoyed this mini tour!
