It’s time for Walkabout 2022 to go visit Dad and do a fair bit of museum hopping on the National Mall whilst the kids are off on holiday at Nags Head in the Outer Banks.
This morning, I’m heading north to just south and east of Washington Dulles International airport to visit the Stephen F. Udvar-Házy National Air and Space Museum annex.
Steven Ferencz Udvar–Házy was one of the founders of the International Lease Finance Corporation which is one of the giants of the aircraft leasing industry (the other one being AerCap) which makes its money by buying expensive commercial jet aircraft and then leasing them to (often!) cash-strapped airlines on easier but ultimately far more lucrative terms for the leasing company than the airlines can get from the jet manufacturers themselves by buying the aircraft outright.
Udvar-Házy is no longer with ILFC after a bit of a falling out with the American International Group who bought them in 1990 but he’s still very much in the aircraft leasing business and still pretty darned well off. So much so that he single-handedly made the Udvar-Házy annex possible and he’s also done other charitable projects for the aviation education industry such as buildings at the main Embry-Riddle campus in Prescott AZ and Utah Tech University.
And with a name like that, I’m pretty sure you can guess that he’s definitely rocking the Hungarian and you would not be wrong in that assessment. We tend to show up in places that you may not have expected to find us…keep that in mind for another powerful encounter during this trip. 🙂
Anywho, I’m off at 0620 and I’m already at the Virginia border by 0730. It’s a rather nice thing having the motorway that connects to I-95 practically on my doorstep… 🙂
If you drive this routing to the National Capitol Area often (and frankly you can add most of Virginia north of Richmond on the I-95 corridor to that area), you’ll know that endless construction projects and massive tailbacks even where there isn’t construction is a constant feature of I-95. Perhaps by the year 2100 they’ll get it sorted out at which point the road will be obsolete because we’ll finally have the flying cars the Jetsons promised us in the 1960s!
Today was surprisingly smooth sailing given that I was due to arrive in the NCA smack-dab in the middle of the massive migration heading north toward the huge mixing bowl junction in Springfield VA where I-95, I-395, and the dreaded I-495 Beltway all converge in a massive spaghetti of huge flyover bridges and tailbacks measured in miles.
The only real tailback I encountered was just north of Fredericksburg near Stafford at Exit 140 and to be fair, it was still an impressive tailback but the traffic did tend to move smoother than is usual in the area during the rush hour. By that, I mean it wasn’t the absolutely *GLACIAL* speed of rush-hour traffic but there was still the maddening oscillations between being at speed and being at a dead stop combined with the joys of dodging mad buggers who’d cut you off at a moment’s notice.
That’s why I felt sorry for the poor girl that was doing a driver’s education check ride in that nasty traffic during the rush-hour! Talk about your trial by fire…I’m absolutely convinced she was a nervous wreck by the time she was done with that behind-the-wheel session. She seemed to take it in stride so I was hopeful she wouldn’t be in an actual wreck in spite of all of the fools round us. 🙂
Fortunately I didn’t have to suffer the entire tailback to the mixing bowl when I was able to escape onto Virginia highway 123 at Exit 160B near Occoquan/Woodbridge to take a more direct course northwest toward IAD. And even though it’s stoplight city all the way to Fairfax, the traffic flow is such that it really didn’t take that long to end up at Dulles via Virginia 236 and finally Virginia 28.
I did have the option of going through Manassas on Virginia 234 directly to Virginia 28 by getting off at Exit 152B but it would have actually taken longer and been more out of the way. But I do plan on doing that routing at some point to visit the battlefield at Manassas when I have more time to play with.
I finally arrive in the Udvar-Házy car park at 1045 and then it’s off to enjoy the museum for a few hours. I finally got to take the lift to the control tower and the views up there are well worth it.
Speaking of the views, I could also see a couple of nasty storms fairly close so I figured it was time to go find the hotel before the heavens opened up and I made it out of the car park just in time.
The Hampton Inn I was staying at is just north of the airport in Sterling and has a very lovely feature in the room I booked…a nice jacuzzi tub! I do believe I’ve found my go-to hotel when I come to the Washington DC area to visit as that jacuzzi was a *GOD-SEND* after many hours in the pilot’s seat and then a few more hours wandering round Udvar-Házy.
After recovering a bit in the tub, I remembered that I hadn’t eaten all day and probably ought to do something about that. Fortunately, there’s a Wegman’s just up the way and I grabbed a stash of snacks and pop and failing to find anything else that really jazzed me, I ended up doing the charcuterie thing featuring of all things…Hungarian salami!
Yep…wild, wacky Hungarians.
We truly are everywhere! 🙂
