The whole purpose of us going to VB was to go back to the Military Aviation History museum to finish going through the facility. We visited the place four years before and only made it about halfway through the place due to the idea that we had another tour that we had to do at a specific time and our timeline had us where we had to leave the museum without finishing going through the place completely in order to make the drive over to the next venue so we didn't miss the ride (it was a boat tour on the river going past the Norfolk navy base). Since we were going to be on the east coast we worked in a visit to VB in order to go back to this place. This museum is centered around a couple of large hangars that have military aircraft from WW1, WW2, and just after, along with other military machinery and vehicles from the era. Inside the climate controlled areas of the main hangar are a lot of paintings of different war scenes, along with models displaying battle scenes and other artifacts from the time, be they uniforms, electronics, weapons, etc. The unique thing about this place is the fact that all of the planes in this museum are running flying machines. The workers for this organization tasked with preserving these machines of military history have restored these planes to the condition they were in when they rolled from the factories that produced them upwards of 100 years ago. Some of these planes will actually fly to air shows and be displayed, either on the ground or doing fly-bys for spectators. If you're an aviation afficionado then you would do yourself a service checking this place out. Inside the main building where you pay for admission and shop the souvenir shop, there are several displays to check out. Some are military vehicles from WW2, some dummy ordnance which includes a German V-1 buzz bomb, several engines that were used in the planes back then, along with many pictures and other good stuff to look at. Proceeding into the main hangar we got a view of multiple WW2 planes and a couple of other planes that served as trainers during the interwar and post war years. Again all of these planes are working models, periodically started up and run and moved around to keep things loosened up and demonstrate to spectators. Depending on what's going on these planes will be moved around to different spots, sometimes moved to the maintenance hangars for servicing. These aren't just simple museum pieces, they can hop in and fly off in em. Most of these planes are very recognizable by anyone who is even remotely familiar with WW2 birds. In the upper level of the hangar there were displays of things like uniforms from the time used by the different powers, radio equipment and other hardware, model displays of the different war machinery even some layouts of the naval battles of Midway and Coral Sea using micro models of the different ships of the Japanese and US navies in their positions during the battle. Picture paintings of different war scenes covered the walls. Moving on to the other hangar, which we ideally drove over to as it was a few hundred yards away from the main hangar, we got to see a series of different WW1 planes. Some are familiar from certain pilots who used them but for all intents, one would have to be a guru in WW1 aviation history to really identify many of these planes due to the simplicity of the designs compared to their WW2 counterparts. Most of these planes started off as simple recon planes then evolved to having pilots carrying side arms to fight other planes to planes having mounted machine guns. Technology had to advance to create hardware like interrupter gears for the propeller and the firing mechanism to keep the machine gun from being able to fire when the prop blade is in front of the barrel of the machine gun. Bombers went from pilots dropping grenades from planes to having purpose made bombs that were suspended under the bodies of the craft. WW1 was another period of technological advancement when it came to aviation technology. Kinda sad when wholesale murder is the catalyst for the human race to advance technologically. But that's another argument for a whole other venue. As can be seen, we had a chance to see up close and personal the planes that served our countries in war and fought to crush those who seek to oppress and take over the world. We even had a chance to check out workers starting up the SBD Dauntless and a sister carrier bomber that were both staged on the tarmac. That was an interesting sight watching them get the engine to turn over and watching it backfire and sputter to life in a cloud of smoke as the plane roared to life. They lowered the wings into takeoff position then drove the planes a short distance along the runway to demonstrate how pre-flight checks and prep would've went down with these planes. That was pretty cool watching these 80 year old planes come to life. But now it was time to leave this cool place and move on to this petting zoo/farm we found. This facility is actually located in the middle of town, with townhouses and apartment complexes among other housing and businesses. It is a regular city for all intents and a busier city at that, the farm is right smack in the middle of all this urban/suburban sprawl. Anyway, the complex has some small buildings that serve as souvenir/refreshment shops before you go to the admission booth at the gate to the farm. There's a barn building that serves as a event hall for weddings or other large gathering events that can be rented out. The farm consists of several pens with different animals, a large chicken run/coop area with 12ft high fences to keep birds from flying out and a large apiary with small tropical birds that you can feed with little bird seed sticks. The farm also has a garden area that incorporates raised beds, much like what we had set up here. The only difference is all of the walkways are covered up so there's no concern with grass/weeds choking out walkways or encircling the raised beds, its a nice and neat layout that allows for growing a fair amount of veggies. Of course as part of the experience the staff sell souvenir cups full of animal feed that you can use to entice the animals who will willingly come to you as they are getting fed constantly. Its really a helluva hustle since they make money off the selling of animal feed they have to buy anyway so its like they're getting the animal feed for free in the end, and you have the privilege of paying them to feed their animals! But nah, its all good though, its one of those things that's fun to experience if you don't have farm animals or have never really seen them up close and personal. There's different goats, llamas, ducks and geese. some pigs, rabbits, pea fowl, and of course the horses. All of which are hungry. The facilities for the other birds are actually impressive. The structures are large enough that they could serve as small houses due to the high enough roof and width to accommodate a good number of birds while allowing caretakers the ability to comfortably walk inside and service the pens. There's foliage inside the pens that the birds can use along with some decorative rocks and mulch that allows the birds a comfortable secure facility where they would never have to come out to be able to "free range" since they can really free range within the enclosed pens. The apiary consists of small tropical birds, like the ones you'd find in a pet store. The structure is like the last pen except larger with higher ceilings. It's made specifically for the small flying birds so it has a few trees within and is set up to mimic a small piece of jungle or rain forest. This is mainly an attraction versus being a productive part of the farm however. The last part of the farm was another thing that was strictly an attraction versus a productive part of the farm. This was a tree top network that consisted of several treehouses that had bridges spanning between the trees, connecting the different treetop platforms. It was another little attraction for kids to enjoy where they can be high above ground going from tree to tree. The tree houses were nicely built and the walkways were safe and sturdy rope setups that were more than capable of holding my weight. We went in and navigated the network of rope bridges and went from treehouse to treehouse. It was pretty cool and I was mainly admiring the workmanship of the whole thing. Almost makes me wanna build a treehouse and the connecting bridge for it and another platform or treehouse. So there you have it, last leg of the trip, which was in Virginia Beach, has come to an end. After we left the petting zoo we went back to the main drag near the boardwalk and grabbed some food for the road and started heading on out. We drove for the rest of the evening for approximately 7 hours, trying to reach the midway point so when we picked up the next day we would already be halfway home. That put us in South Carolina, about an hour from Atlanta, GA. From there we just kept rolling, stopping only to stretch our legs, refuel a couple of times, get some food and check out the visitors centers for a couple of states. We made it home with daylight to spare. With that the east coast tour was officially over.
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