Friday, 27 April 2018 – Vans Aircraft and Spruce Goose

Getting a personal tour of Van’s Aircraft
Spruce Goose at Evergreen Museum

Even though this park is further south than I wanted, it is close to some key sites. This morning we drove to Van’s Aircraft in nearby Aurora OR. Most of you know I have been building an airplane for a very long time. More than 20 years. The airplane is a kit manufactured by Vans Aircraft. Van’s gives tours and we arrived there at 9:30am. We enjoyed a lovely personal tour of the factory and got to see where all of my parts were created. It was really nice for me to get to see. On the way back to McMinnville we stopped to see the Vintage Trailer Park. This park is featured on the TV show Flippin RV’s where the show renovates old/classic RV’s. This park has several of Flyte Camps RV’s that are included in their vintage section. These vintage trailers are permanently located at the park and are rented by the night like hotel rooms or cabins. They are neat to see. We simply stumbled on the park on the way to Aurora. It rained on and off all day which seems normal for Oregon. The temperatures peaked at about 52F today. Not near as nice as yesterday.

On return to McMinnville we ate at the quirky Wildwood Cafe. Donna had French Toast, Eggs, and Bacon breakfast and I had the French Dip. It was all excellent and a good value. The restaurant is located right off of the cute old tree-lined downtown main street. We still had most of the day ahead so we chose to go ahead and see the next big local attraction. I didn’t mention it but the RV park is located immediately adjacent to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. Not just another local aircraft museum, this one houses the infamous Spruce Goose built by Hughes Aircraft. Wow, it is huge. Its similar in size to a Boeing 747 or Airbus A380 and is built entirely from wood. Overall the museum is one of the best non-government aircraft museums we have seen. After the museum our legs were worn out so we called it a day.