On Monday, August 31, 2020 - We drove for two hours from Muncie, Indiana to Wright Patterson Air Force Base and Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is the heritage city for the birth of aviation. The Wright Brothers lived in Dayton and designed their aircraft here. We are also at Wright Patterson AFB which is the engineering and design center for the United States Air Force.

On Monday after arrival, we drove to the Commissary and Base Exchange at Wright Patterson AFB. We had lunch and then purchased some food items at the commissary. After working on the blog, I took a twenty-two mile ride on my single bike while Lisa put in five miles on a walk. The temps were great and it was looking like possible rain, but we did not get any.

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020, We decided to go explore the history of the Wright Brothers in the Dayton area. We arrived at the Aviation Trail Visitor Center which is just across a patio from the "replica" Wright Cycle Company. We had read that they were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but it had said that those were winter hours. Turns out that, due to the Corona virus, they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So, we walked the area and took photos that we could from outside the buildings. We then went to see the Paul Dunbar home (a close friend of the Wright Brothers) and took more photos. Then we decided that we would go see the Woodland Cemetery where Paul Dunbar and the Wright Brothers are buried. See the photo gallery for photos on these comments. After the Woodland Cemetery, we drove to the Carillon Historical Park where there is a Wright Brothers National Museum and a huge series of buildings dedicated to the historical manufacturing history of the Dayton area. We had lunch at Culp's Cafe' which began in Dayton in 1902; a year before the Wright Brothers first flight. The Wright Brothers National Museum houses many artifacts in addition to the actual Wright Flyer III which was built by the brothers in 1905. This plane was the one that the Wright Brothers perfected so that they could fly longer flights; their longest with this craft was 39 minutes. It was recommended for the museum in the early 1940s by Orville Wright himself. He even help remove the craft from storage and assemble it. He was not able to see the dedication of the museum in 1950; Orville died in 1948. Both the Wright Brothers National Museum and the Carillon Historical Park are worth seeing. We ended up spending about five hours seeing both exhibits. I will put together a video for the Wright Brothers and another for the Carillon Historical Park. Be sure to see them when you get a chance. The videos provide much more time to explain what we are seeing and explain why they are significant. Tomorrow, we visit the National Museum of the US Air Force. I'm told that I will need two days to see everything, but we will only have one day to do it all. We will see!

Tuesday, September 2, 2020 - We went to the National Museum of the US Air Force. This is a museum with over a million square feet of interior space with just about every aircraft that you could think about. This is a fantastic museum and, in my opinion, the best that I have ever seen. The museum is, essentially, divided into four major sections:

1. Building #1 contains the Early Years of Aviation Gallery and the World War II gallery.
2. Building #2 contains the Southeast Asia War Gallery and the Korean War Gallery.
3. Building #3 contains the Cold War Gallery.
4. Building #4 contains the Presidential Aircraft Gallery, the Global Reach (Airlift) Gallery, the Space Gallery, and the Research and Development Gallery.
5. Between Buildings 3 and 4 you find the Missile Gallery.

This museum is large. You need a minimum of two full days to do a reasonable visit at this museum; Two buildings per day. Even this may not be enough time if you watch all the videos and read the material provided. We had to stop for lunch in the Valkyrie Cafe' to get some more strength to continue (there is an actual B-70 Valkyrie on display in Building #4). There are also several other side exhibits worth seeing such as the Holocaust Display and the Desert Storm action display. This museum also houses the original Memphis Belle B-17 that was brought back to the states after its 25 missions and the "Bockscar" B-29 that dropped the "Fat Boy" atomic weapon on Nagasaki, Japan. We also spent quite a bit of time at the B-52D exhibit exploring the aircraft. Since it is nearly impossible to explain all that we saw with words in a short space, I recommend that you look at the photo gallery and video covering this visit (once I get them loaded).

Tomorrow we depart Dayton for Warsaw, Indiana where we will see a doctor who will examine Lisa's shoulder. Lisa has a rotator cuff injury/tear and it hurts when she kayaks or dances.