Back in California- Indoor Rock Climbing and a History Lesson for All

Back at Travis Air Force base, it took us a good week to adjust back to California time and on top of that, the kids became sick.  As a result, we spent a few weeks relaxing and just doing things around base. We visited the air museum, a much larger collection than we were expecting. Here we are looking at a model of a plane that is outside. A man came thru and said he flew that plane many years ago. He later donated this photograph of the original crew in front of the plane.

Here we are with the real plane, the "Miss America".

A model of the C5, the plane we had just flown on to Hawaii and Japan. You can see that it's a two story plane. The seats are the upper back half of the plane and facing the tail. The bottom floor contains cargo- supplies, vehicles, helicopters, luggage, etc.

We watched this video about the Doolittle raids over Tokyo. This was a secret mission. Once on board the aircraft carrier, The USS Hornet, pilots learned that they would be leading the first attack on mainland Japan following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The plan was to get close enough to Tokyo for 16 bombers to be able to takeoff from the ship, bomb targets and land in a designated safe zone inside China. This was unheard of. The only time a bomber had left a ship previously was a week earlier when they tried it to see if it was even possible. Unfortunately, they came upon a Japanese fishing boat and feared an alert to Japan was imminent. Leaving now the pilots would most likely run out of fuel before reaching the safe zone. It was potentially a suicide mission.  Lt Col. Jimmy Doolittle explained the situation and 80 men in total chose to go with Doolittle flying the first and most dangerous plane. Because the planes could not be stored underneath, they were all lined up together on one end of the carrier. He had the shortest runway and the longest flight. All 16 planes successfully took off and bombed their targets, however all but one crashed. The other one landed in Russia where the crew was held captive for a year. Three men died that day. Seven were captured by the Japanese, four were later killed and the other four survived 40 months of imprisonment.

This is a replica of the bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 causing two square miles of devastation and killing 45,000 people. It was the second and last time a nuclear weapon was used in war. It's 10'8" long, 60" in diameter and weighed 10,800lbs. 

We learned about the Tuskegee Airmen. I didn't realize segregation happened in the military, so this was a mind-blowing, emotional section of the museum for me. The fact that these men served their country, but were treated as less than their white counterparts, breaks my heart. Black military aviators were trained in Tuskegee, Alabama. They were referred to as "The Redtail Angels" because of the red paint on their planes and their success in keeping bombers safe while escorting them to enemy targets. 

Outside we checked our about a dozen retired aircrafts.

Once the kids were feeling better, we took them indoor rock climbing for the first time! When we first arrived, Asher said he wasn't going to climb. I insisted that we all put on harnesses, but assured both children that no one HAD to climb. Of course once they saw daddy and I do it, they were ready to try themselves. 

I was being silly here showing them how the auto-belay device works 

and giving them confidence that they can't fall while using this. 

They ended up having a great time climbing.

The kids haven't stopped talking about the Jelly Belly factory, so we decided to take them again since we were so close. Hey Jelly Belly, if you ever need a family to drive your RV around the country to promote your jelly beans, call us! 

Yes, that's a picture of a bear made out of jelly belly beans!

Our visit to the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area.

Those rolling green hills are so beautiful and easily recognizable.

We were here at Easter. I had found an egg hunt for the kids to participate in. Unfortunately it began at 11 and ended at 11:01. Of course we were just walking up at 10:59 and didn't have time to find our age group before they said "GO!" so all of the eggs were snatched up just seconds before my kids walked thru. I was so sad for them. One mom came over and said we might still find a couple eggs hidden in the grass. We combed every foot and did manage to find about 10, which honestly made it more fun because those were the hardest ones to find. We stayed and played at the playground for awhile and on our way back to the truck, a mom pulled up and asked where the egg hunt was. I had to tell her it was over just as fast as it began. In the backseat, her little girl began to cry. I went to our truck and my kids asked what happened. I explained and then Journey said, "I have a good idea. We could give her our eggs!" With tears in my eyes, I ran back to the mom and told her not to leave. We hid eggs for her to find and the kids all left happy. What a wonderful moment to see my kids show compassion to a stranger, giving her what was theirs.

And finally it was time to head north. On our way out of California, we stopped the most beautiful highway rest stop I had ever seen. This overlooks Lake Shasta. (A short time later I would find out Canada and Alaska are full of scenic rest stops.)