Flying Fortress in Denver

Shockingly, it's September already. Where did the summer go?! Oh yeah, I guess that's what I'm supposed to be writing about. :-)

In June, about a week after we got back from Yellowstone, we flew out to Denver to visit Andrew and Lindsay, who both got internships at Lockheed Martin. We happened to be in town at the same time as the "Flying Fortress," which is a B-17 bomber from WWII. It was refurbished so that people could actually sign up to fly in it, for a few hundred dollars. We actually thought about it, but ended up just taking a ground tour.

The ground tour reminded us that planes have come a LONG way since WWII. A bunch of space on the plane was taken up by racks of big bulky radios, one for each frequency they wanted to hear. At one point, I saw a bunch of cylindrical tanks in a corner, and asked the tour guide what they were for. That's when I was reminded that the cabin wasn't pressurized and that people needed the tanks for air.

Unless thing was going to stay under 10,000 feet (and given that Denver is already at 6,000 feet, so it was probably unlikely), I was glad we decided not to fly!

We also had fun doing short hikes. At the lake near the Lockheed offices, we saw monster dandelion fluffs (my hand included for scale).