Today, we moved to Markin Glen County Park near Kalamazoo, MI.  We stayed here one night in September 2010 with the Kaspers and Ratcliffs on our way to check out the fall colors in New England.  It is a great RV park with paved streets, paved and cement sites, and lots of grass for Molly.  And, the price is not bad.

Our trip down from Traverse City was very foggy, but fortunately highway 131 is a four lane, divided, controlled access highway which made the drive a little less stressful. After we got set up, we met a very interesting couple from London, Ontario.  He was a torpedo bomber pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces. That is what is so interesting about the RVing lifestyle.  At almost every park, you get to meet and get to know folks with all kinds of interesting backgrounds and stories of their travels.

Wednesday, we drove to Portage, MI, to check out the Air Zoo located adjacent to the airport.  After we bought our tickets, a Viet Nam veteran who is a docent at the museum gave us a quick over view of the place and gave us some helpful hints.   If we wanted to, he would have given us a tour, but we opted to do it on our own after the information he gave us. 

After you leave the foyer, you enter a huge room with beautiful murals on all four walls that capture periods of time in the development of aircraft which is what the aircraft on display in the room also mirrors.  From left to right, there are replicas or real aircraft from the first flight at Kitty Hawk up to the SR-71 Blackbird.  There is an excellent mix of aircraft in the room so there is not an over abundance of a particular period or type.  In the rear of the room are several simulators that you can take the stick and try to "fly" a plane - props to jets.  

In one side room there is a well documented story on the role that WASP (Women Air force Service Pilots) played during WWII.  What I did not know was that while they were trained to fly all AAF aircraft and faced enemy fire, they were not afforded veteran status as their male counterparts after the war and it was not until the 70's that a law was enacted that granted them full veteran status.

As you exit the back of the main room, you can go left or right into another building that is divided into two areas.  One area starts with the pioneers in space exploration and ends with displays of Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle equipment.  The other area is devoted the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame with aircraft flown by noteworthy aviators from Michigan.  If you recall, our blog about our visit to the Grand Traverse Lighthouse near Northport, Navy pilots training to be carrier pilots did touch and go landings on converted ships on Lake Michigan.  One of the planes on display in that room is a plane that crashed and sunk in the lake and was recovered and restored recently.  The story behind the crash was told to us by one of the docents.  There are three tanks on the plane - one in each of the wings and one in the body of the plane.  There is a position switch in the cockpit that the pilot can select which tank to feed the engine.  While a student pilot was doing his routine touch and goes, he noted that the tank in the body (center position on the selector) was almost out of gas, so he switched it to the left wing tank.   After several passes, that tank was getting low, so he moved the indicator to the center, forgetting that he had started with that tank and it was almost empty and not remembering that he had not used any fuel from the right tank, so he declared an emergency and attempted to land on the "carrier", but since it was not rigged to accept aircraft (ie did not have arresting cables), they tried in vain to wave him off.  He landed, but to keep from hitting aircraft parked on the deck to simulate a live carrier deck, he forced the plane over the side.  He was rescued, but the plane sank.  When they recovered the plane, the right wing fuel tank was full of gasoline.

After checking out most of the planes on display (they have more than 100), we watched a 4D movie in their mini-IMAX like theater.  The film was an animated story of a navigator in a B-17 on a bombing mission from England to Germany.  As they about to complete their bombing run, the plane is hit by enemy flack, but they finish the run, drop their bombs, and turn back for England.   Before they could get to the English Channel, they are hit by enemy fighters, and the plane begins to loose altitude.  The navigator is the only crewman to get out, and all of his crew are killed.  The story flashes forward to the navigator returning to Europe some 60 years later to visit the WWII Memorial where his crew are buried.  The movie was made to honor the airmen who lost their lies in WWII. 

After we finished our tour of the museum, we drove toward the warehouse district in Kalamazoo and found the original Bell Brewery and their Eccentric Café adjacent to the brewery.  We both ordered their Jam Burger (a hand pressed 6 oz. burger with cheddar cheese served on a brioche bun smothered with bacon jam and tomato jam, and fresh cut, double fried french fries on the side).  Shirley was good to her diet as she got hers without the bun and fries.  Good eats!  I could have eaten a bowl of the bacon jam or the tomato jam!