1 March

Today I was rudely awoken at what I thought was 4:45 but was really 5:45. When I realised I had changed time zones last night, I realised I had better get up as time was awastin’. It was shower and dress, then down for breakfast and have my vegemite on toast, then back to the room and fill up the washer bottle on the car (and by the tenth trip I wondered if it was larger than the fuel tank), pack and then check out. The next task was to fill the car and I did that on the way out. It was straight onto the Interstate then and after not too long I was in Ohio.
A quick stop at the Welcome Centre to get a road map and some information and I was off. Following the instructions from my SatNav I was soon at the museum (just after 10) and then it was straight in and spy the lie of the land. There was a guided tour starting at 10:30 so I enquired about that and also put my name down for the Presidential/experimental tour (actually on the USAF Base, so I needed to show and have my passport) for 2. By then it was time to start the tour.
The volunteer guide (there was no entrance fee to the museum) had been in the USAF and had also researched his topics well and had a good, though occasionally biased, view of aircraft development. We went through the first hangar, which was flight starting to WWI. That should have been the end of the tour, but he had us by then so we did a quick look through the second hangar (WWII) and then the third hangar (the Cold War to the present) and a quick look at the missiles. I had to leave then as it was 1:40 and we had to assemble for the tour at the base.
By 1:55 we were all present, so we went out, got on the little blue schoolbus (it had been a little yellow schoolbus, but was repainted blue) so I also got to see what they are like (not as comfortable as the best school buses we have, but a lot better than most of our school buses).
We travelled to the two hangars on the base (the museum has no place to store them and no way of making sure they remain secure, so this is the best solution at the moment). After an hour there, we were back on the bus and back to the museum. I then hot-footed it around the museum to get as many pictures as I could (I had already scouted out the best path) and had to leave at 5. I took my last shot of the front of the museum and ran out of film (well, filled the card – 454 pictures, though I had a spare card, and I had already finished one set of batteries but had a third set with me – I recharge them each night so there are always three fully-charged sets, and I also empty the card of all but one picture – that keeps the pictures consecutively numbered, though you get to see them after they are named, shrunk and rotated). I perused the discount coupons for Ohio in the car and found a Knights Inn at a reasonable $35 ($42 after taxes) and booked in there before getting some tea and returning to do my computer administrative work (transferring photos, saving a raw copy of each, naming them on another copy, then shrinking and rotating them prior to sending them to flickr and then writing and posting my blog. I hoep to be in bed by 9 tonight as I am tired.
I also have to work out where to go next – towards New Orleans to catch up with a nephew’s in-laws, back to Bellevue to catch up with the couple I met on the train or straight to Colorado Springs to the USAF Academy there and down to the desert features (Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, the valleys and Las Vegas). Decisions, decisions, and I only have nineteen days left to do it all in before I depart the US for Canada.
I will try to do that before I go to bed.