After a free hotel breakfast we walked out to the car to more wind and rain; a perfect day for a museum visit. We decided to take a detour from the coast and head inland to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, OR. We stumbled across this museum on a trip to Oregon a few years ago but didn’t have enough time to make admission worth it at the time, we kept it pinned for a future visit and it was well worth it.
The aviation building was constructed to hold the Spruce Goose, the largest wooden airplane ever built. The scale of this ~320 foot wingspan seaplane is impossible to describe and photos can’t do justice to how it looms over the rest of the museum’s collection.
The space building was also packed with neat exhibits including a Mercury capsule, SR-71, and Titan II rocket.
After the museum we continued south in the rain for a few hours before heading back west toward the coast. The rain started to ease and we stopped to check out the beach in Bandon, OR before finding a campsite at Boice Cope Park. Some dry weather, a warm campfire, wine, and grilled cheese sandwiches closed out another day on the road.
