Washington, DC has a very particular energy during the summer season. The universities are on summer term, those fortunate enough to have vacation days head out of the city, and even the most driven professionals feel the urge to sneak out a few minutes early. The interns take over the metro and bars, everyone sweats in their suits, summer Fridays are pervasive, business booms for restaurants with patios (and the servers hate the patio section), a Friday at Jazz in the Garden is a must, a couple rooftop happy hours are equally as essential, and suddenly Virginia and Maryland are more enticing for a visit.
If you’re working through the DC summer, or just want to mix up the weekends you do spend in the city, daytrips and other roadtrips are a great way to get out while staying put. Today I visited the second Air & Space museum (the Dulles Airport sister of the original DC museum), named the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, for a fantastic mini-adventure.
The museum consists of one main, massive hangar filled with planes, a second, space-themed hangar attached perpendicularly to the main hangar, a restoration hangar that you can observe, and a control tower.
If you have any interest in planes or flight at all, this museum is amazing. I arrived right at 10am, when they open, and had several areas of the museum to myself or just with another group nearby. By the time I left in the afternoon, the place starting to fill up- if you have any interest in using the flight simulator, heading up to the control tower, taking a tour, or seeing a movie, I suggest getting there as soon as it opens for no wait times. Continue reading “DC Summer Series: The Dulles Air & Space Museum”
anchored & adrift 