Week Two
1406-Huntington WV_3772-B-C
3773 - We stumbled onto this small outdoor museum in Huntington, WV. This huge steam engine (H-6) was designed to be light on the rails and very flexible. It spent its entire working life up in the 'hollers' picking up loaded coal hoppers from the mines up in the mountains.
3797 - This string of diesels look like they're in storage. Not a good sign...
3799 - Gail (I helped) had just completed a multi-week project of building models of these yard light towers for her HO scale West Virginia Northern railroad. It was good to get another look at the real ones. The models are great!
3802 - The inside of the Huntington passenger station, once one of the busiest on the Chesapeake & Ohio. Now just a reminder of what once was.
3807 - The outside of the Huntington station. With additions added to either side, it is now used as offices for the CSX railroad.
3809 - On our way out of town, we did manage to catch one moving train (the closer one) passing a standing train. Pretty good "train fix" for us that day....
3810 - Woo Hoo! Ohio!
3815 - Scioto Trails campground was pretty nice, and it gave us the first "real autumn leaves" photo.
1406-SciotoTrails CG OH_3816-C
4219 - We were nicely tucked in among the trees, with a full view of the lake behind us. Later that night, I discovered a leak in the bathroom ceiling around the skylight. Ugh! We put a sponge next to the drip to control it. In the morning, the rains had stopped for a while, and fortified by a great breakfast that Gail prepared, I climbed up to roof, and decided I could patch the leak with the materials I had on hand. I finished goobering up the roof just a little before it started to sprinkle again.
4231 - Compare this view with photo from yesterday. I had told Gail I hoped it would rain some more to test the patches I put on the roof. Be careful what you wish for. By evening the lightning and thunder was very intense. Then came the hail. Marble sized hail. It was so loud you couldn't think straight inside the camper. We were fearful that at the very least the hood on the truck was going to be pock-marked by morning!
3832 - This fabulous mural greets you on entering the facility.
3843 - The Aladdin Shrine Temple is HUGE. This is the larges of the areas in the property, but there are several other meeting rooms of significant size. Terry wanted us to see it all before it is all torn down in the next year or so. Years ago, when this was built, there were about 16,000 members here, now they're down to under 6,000. It doesn't make sense anymore to have such a tremendous capacity for events (public and Shriners) with so much fewer members.
Aladdin Shrine_Komar3939A-C
3947 - "No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." This personifies the philosophy of Shriners and Shriners Hospitals for Children. Never ceases to make me misty eyed.
4177 - On Monday, 10/6/14, after raining all night, we were greeted to a beautiful sunrise. After 3 days of on and off rain, it was a welcome sight indeed! We said our goodbyes to Terry and Faye, and then, off to a new adventure!
4183 - We arrived at Terry & Faye's place in the pouring rain. This is their new "retirement downsized" home, about 3 times bigger than their old one. Good for them!
3985 - Nearly 45 years ago, I hitched a ride on a training flight in a Cessna 172 with my good, dearly departed buddy Ted Patty, from Buffalo to Dayton, and caught a quick glimpse of the USAF Museum here. The Museum has expanded and been greatly improved since then. This huge, and somewhat awkward B-36 bomber was then sitting outside, suffering from the dis-use and weather. I promised I would come back to see her again. It took a while....
4034 - B-36. Yes, big and awkward. Yes, those propellers on the wing ARE facing backwards. And if those six piston engines weren't enough, they stuck another four JET engines on it too! (Facing forward.) AF pilots were encouraged to regularly fly small planes to remember the "feel" of flying, since there wasn't much on this beast. Jimmy Stewart flew these in the 1955 movie "Strategic Air Command", at least until he crashed in Greenland, with June Alison worrying about him the whole time.
4052 - After Convair got over it's awkward B-36, they came out with the B-57, the first Supersonic bomber! Big delta wing, pointy at the front. Four jet engines. Zoom. The outboard #1 and #4 engines are just about at the wing tips. If either one of these failed in supersonic flight, it would instantly flat spin. The only way to recover from it was to eject and and watch it crash from the safety of your parachute! Well, almost perfect.
4082 - Douglas C-133. Looks like the big brother to the much more successful C-130 Hercules. It has a few problems, like it was so noisy inside that troops could barely function after a long flight. Instability. One of them was last seen exiting the bottom of a cloud in an inverted flat spin. Splat.
