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Published: January 17th 2008
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Obfuscator writes: We woke up to a thick layer of frost over everything. I guess I should be getting used to this, since it is January. Nevertheless, we're finding that camping in the extreme cold holds very little appeal. I think Onaxthiel spent most of the night shivering. I gradually added more layers through the night, which helped a lot, but made me very reluctant to crawl into the 10ish degree outside in the morning. Being in the middle of a big snow-covered State Park with nothing to see did nothing to encourage us to linger further, so we packed up our stuff, and headed out to Lincoln and beyond. It took us a while to get back to the main roads from our campsite, but it all eventually worked out.
We skipped past Lincoln for the time being, and headed toward a little town called Ashland, where the Strategic Air and Space Museum is located. I guess this used to be the Strategic Air Command Museum, and it was located on the SAC base. Now it's a museum all about SAC, but it's located off the Strategic Command facilities. That's ok though. You won't get to see any of
the actual facilities, but you won't be disappointed. Admission was only $7, and if you're at all interested in aircraft, and specifically bombers and SAC, you'll find that it's well worth the price. They've got more information about SAC and individual bombers than you can shake a stick at.
At the museum, they have a B-17, and a B-29, and a bunch of other WWII bombers, as well as the bombers that came later. The gargantuan B-36 Peacemaker, which was one of the largest aircraft ever flown. It had 6 pusher props and four jet engines. It was designed to carry massive H-bombs, and had crawl tubes built in for the crew to move from one end of the plane to the other. I should also mentioned that it had a crew of 15, five of which were gunners. At one point they even designed a parasite fighter to be stowed in one or more of its bomb bays, in order that it would always have a fighter escort. Problems with redocking the “Gremlin” led them to abandon this project, but you get the idea.
It was later replaced by the more cost effective B-52s, which relied solely
on jet power, and of course they have one of those on display too. It was interesting to learn that in Vietnam, tail gunners on B-52s actually had two confirmed kills on Vietnamese Migs. They had some nifty looking cruise missiles and Air to Surface Missiles on display too. I guess as the world and potential threats changed, so too did the mission of the B-52s.
They also had the B-58 Hustler, which was the first supersonic bomber, as well as an F-111 Aardvark, which played an important role as both a fighter and a bomber later on. Finally, they have a B-1a, which of course brings their bomber collection into the modern age. This is next to a British Bomber, the Vulcan, which saw action in the Falklands.
On the non-bomber front, they have a Mig-21, and some American fighters and trainers. They also have a few espionage planes, including both the U-2 and the SR-71, as well as several modified bombers that served in that capacity at various points in the SAC's history. Finally, there are some helicopters and cargo planes to round out the collection. They're also working on developing an extensive collection of space
memorabilia, and already have a cool exhibit on a local astronaut who's been working up on the ISS.
We spent a long time in the museum, but finally decided we should be moving along. I should also mention that they have really nice volunteers at the museum, who will answer all sorts of questions. From there, we headed back into Lincoln. We stopped at a place called “Steak Buffet USA,” which had pretty decent food for a reasonable price, especially for lunch. Once we were done gorging ourselves, we headed downtown to find the state capitol.
Nebraska's state capitol is a bit odd. It's very tall and narrow looking, for one thing. I think both of us thought that it resembled North Dakota's Stalinist architecture at first glance, but slightly prettier with a dome and statue on top. Upon closer inspection, it's much prettier than North Dakota's. It has friezes and statuary all over the outside, mostly of important thinkers and scenes in the history of government.
I was not at all confident about what we would find, once we entered the capitol. We came in at the ground floor, and found ourselves in a dark and
dungeonesque series of hallways that didn't seem to go anywhere interesting. There were no statues, portraits, rotundas, or anything pretty at all. Eventually, we went up a floor, and found that the interior of the state capitol was actually rather pretty. They had a lot of cool statues, and a couple of courtyards, and nifty floor mosaics, including dinosaurs! They also have a unicameral congress, which was neat to see, since it was actually in session when we visited. A nice tour guide lady who used to live in Milwaukee showed us the governor's office and press room, as well as the Supreme Court chambers, all of which were nice. On her advice, we took an elevator up to the 14th floor, and walked around what we could of the top floor, checking out the views of Lincoln. The city doesn't look terribly cool from up there, but they had some neat murals on the walls.
After we had wandered around the capitol for a couple of hours, we figured we should get going, and went back to the car. We drove a couple of hours to the west, and found a motel near Kearney, Nebraska. We had been
debating camping, but the weather forecast called for another stupidly frigid night, and we just weren't feeling up to it. It was a bizarre little motel room we ended up in, with sort of a garden/gazebo feel to it, but it got the job done, and so we spent the night wasting time there.
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