Air and Space Muesum

Dave Barry described the Smithsonian as "America's attic." If so, then the Air and Space Museum is the dusty, cobwebby corner where all the cool junk is piled. You know, things like a stuffed armadillo or a human head preserved in formaldehyde. The museum is a junkpile, but the junk is amazing stuff.

Take the lobby. You walk in, look up, and see the Spirit of St. Louis dangling above you. Next to it hangs the carrot-orange X-1, the plane that shattered the sound barrier. Directly in front of you is an Apollo re-entry capsule with a pitted and scarred heat shield. Look left; you'll see a small pit crammed with enough phallic missiles to drive a gender-studies professor mad.

Fittingly, half the museum is "air" and the other half is "space," though the distinction gets a little blurry in some exhibits. But you aren't there to read the panels. You've come to gawk at rockets the size of skyscrapers and bombs big enough to blow Pittsburgh to pieces. The space section has plenty of both. A giant Minuteman missile thrusts out of the ground; next to it stands a hulking Viking rocket and a long, skinny space rocket. To put it simply: awesome!

Do you ever get tired of the tons of fire-spouting death-dealing machinery? Not really, no. My particular favorite was the DarkStar, an aerial observation drone that looks like a larval form of the spaceship Enterprise. The whole "unmanned aerial vehicles" exhibit was quite cool. Did you know the first UAV was a WWI-era biplane? The Allies stuffed it with explosives, pointed it at the German lines, and voila! Less agile than a Predator drone but no less explosive.

The museum offers a few options for those who yawn at phrases like "1,000,000 megaton nuclear bomb" and "speeds in excess of Mach 5." In the space exhibit, you will find some beautiful photographs taken by the Hubble telescope. And the museum's air side contains a long and fascinating history of WWI aviation. It's a long walk, but stick around to the end and you'll be rewarded with the wonderfully absurd sight of a Red Baron pizza next to a photo of the actual Red Baron.

Don't forget the gift shop!

Be aware of one thing. The SA&SM--as some probably call it--is always crowded. Funny thing about the crowds. The women usually look bored and the guys look fascinated. Ah, museums. They truly bring out the stereotypes in people.