Today I visited a museum that I last visited more than 12 years ago. My mind wandered to this museum along a twisting path over the last week. Several streams of thought converged and today I made a long delayed return visit.

One of the streams of thought started with two of my students talking about the SR-71 Blackbird.

I told my students that I could find an SR-71 on Google Maps. They put me to the challenge and of course I was able to pull up this picture.

Photo from Google Maps – Castle Air Museum – Atwater, California

If you look very closely in the bottom right had corner you will see the SR-71 Blackbird.

Of course, seeing all the other planes and jets in the satellite picture got my memory churning and remembering the last time I visited the museum. I knew that I needed to visit again.

Another thread of thought was prompted by my Castle Rock post earlier this week. This also got me thinking of Castles and you can see that the museum is called the Castle Air Museum. The museum is located at the decommissioned Castle Air Force Base.

Some of you may have been expecting another installment of my Walls of Jericho series this evening. We had an announcement on Wednesday evening that our regular Sunday morning classes would be canceled, so since my mind had been wandering toward the Castle Air Museum I decided to make the trip. I took the opportunity to go to church services with friends in Patterson this morning. Patterson is on the way to Atwater, so after a great lunch I continued on down to the museum. I was then able to make another stop in Patterson on the way home.

I saw great aircraft such as this B52D Stratofortress Bomber which at one time was the largest and heaviest aircraft ever flown.

There was also some great art on the planes such as the nose of this Curtiss C-46D Commando cargo plane. I really like this great Cat face.

Of course, you know that I am always looking out for opportunities to take pictures of birds or flowers and I couldn’t resist this picture of an Egret walking near the B52 Bomber.

I took more than 300 pictures at the museum, so you can look forward to seeing more of them someday soon.

Steven