"There is no airplane in the world that I know of that is as big dimensionally and what we truthfully call bigness." ~Howard Hughes

I've always wanted to see the Spruce Goose, which is housed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville OR...as hop, skip and jump from Portland. Today was National Museum Day sponsored by Smithsonian and the Evergreen Aviation Museum was on the list of free museums. You can't get better than that. So...I hopped in the car and headed toward McMinnville. 

I'm not a huge airplane fan...I enjoy seeing them, but I don't know everything about them, nor do I want too. But I enjoyed seeing what I saw and especially enjoyed seeing the largest plane ever built. 

"The largest airplane ever constructed, and flown only one time, the Spruce Goose represents one of man’s greatest attempts to conquer the skies. It was born out of a need to move troops and material across the Atlantic Ocean, where in 1942, German submarines were sinking hundreds of Allied ships. Henry Kaiser, steel magnate and shipbuilder, conceived the idea of a massive flying transport and turned to Howard Hughes to design and build it. Hughes took on the task, made even more challenging by the government’s restrictions on materials critical to the war effort, such as steel and aluminum. Six times larger than any aircraft of its time, the Spruce Goose, also known as the Flying Boat, is made entirely of wood." (http://evergreenmuseum.org/the-museum/aircraft-exhibits/the-spruce-goose/)

 It's so big there is no way to get it all in one picture in the building. It blew my mind.

There are lots and lots of other planes, dwarfed, surrounding the Spruce Goose.

Pardon the pictures of the displays....they just contained lots of interesting information. You can click on the picture to make it larger if it isn't readable this way.

Signatures of some of the crew on the only flight the Spruce Goose aka H-4 Hercules-which was its official name.

Inside the plane...

For a fee you can go up into the flight deck. I opted to pass this time on that...but there were pictures.

The wings are large enough on the plane that men can walk through the inside of them without crouching until nearly the end. Wow.

Lots of planes...

 There was seating around the building for rest...it was all old airplane seats.

The museum is on a lot of property and there was a lovely grove of trees leading to the Chapel.

Next door is the Evergreen Aviation Wings and Waves Waterpark.

Back to the planes on display outdoors.

The Spruce Goose from outside.

The front view of this plane reminded me of the face of a grumpy old man. :)  You?

One of the retired Air Force One planes.

There was also a space portion of the museum in another building next door. I sped through that because I was getting a little museum-ed out.

Lockheed Blackbird. I thought this plane was facinating.

I saw lots of planes and was so glad I took a drive down to see the Spruce Goose. You can only imagine how big it is until you see it. Go if you can!