Lone Star State.............

We are making headway traveling west! The past few nights were spent in Hurricane Mills, TN and Little Rock Arkansas. Once in Texas, we spent one night in Dallas, before moving on to Sweetwater, TX. Our days we spend driving, and then we pull in to the campground early afternoon to just chill out before moving on. We don't drive more than 250 miles or 5 hours in a day if we can help it-for safety reasons. Many RV'ers follow these guidelines. It works well for us.

sunset from our front window (in Sevierville, TN)

putting on the football game in Little Rock, AK

unwinding after a long drive

nice campground! lots of good walking here!

We stayed a couple of nights in Sweetwater, TX, due to high winds. We don't like driving in high winds, or gusty weather. Due to the height of the RV, we really feel the swaying when its windy, and its a  little harder to drive. So when we heard the weather forecast called for sustained winds of 20-30 mph with gusts to 40mph, we decided to spend another night in Sweetwater. There is not a lot going on here, but there were two places we visited on our extra day here.

When in Texas..............

Sweetwater...where is everybody?

center of town

set up like the old west

center of town

The National WASP WWII Museum came highly recommended by the campground host, so we decided to check it out. WASP stands for Women Airforce Service Pilots. This small museum is housed in an aircraft hangar at Avenger Field, where these civilian women learned to become military pilots during WWII. They were NOT trained for combat. From 1942-1944, the WASPs delivered 80% of the aircraft from the factory to military bases. They also flew planes towing targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice. It was pretty dangerous. Yikes!

The WASPs were considered civilians, and had no military status, therefore received no military benefits. They paid for their housing, food, etc. All records of their contributions were sealed, so their contribution to the war was not well known. Eventually, after 35 years or so, politicians (such as Barry Goldwater) pushed Congress to recognize the WASPs as veterans of WWII with full military status.

In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded the WASPs the Congressional Gold Medal. At the time though, only 300 WASPs were still alive to receive this prestigious award. These women were truly heroes, and served our nation well.

The museum was quite interesting to us, as we did not know about the WASPs before today. The stories were very interesting, and we loved the 20-minute video.  For more information, click here.

the museum

a good summary!

ready Susie?

One of the organizers of the WASPs

check out that airplane

American Girl Doll-Molly-in a WASP outfit

silver wings the WASPs were awarded upon their graduation from training

an interview with a 90 year old women who was a WASP-fascinating! She flew planes towing a target-which you can see a bit of on the left. That is a picture of her about 70 years earlier!

38 WASPs died in aircraft accidents

WASPs have their names and hand prints, along with a brief bio, at the museum

more

Congressional Gold Medal - awarded by President Obama

this is the training simulator....another wood piece was placed over the top so it was totally enclosed for training. It was dark and the women flew totally based on the instrument panel

the controls inside the flight simulators

the "dorm"-each room housed 6 women

a car (and luggage) from that time period

bamboo aircraft (that was just sent to the museum and now needs to be put together) 

"Fifinella"-designed by Walt Disney for a gremlin movie, and he granted the WASPs rights to use it as their mascot

Avenger Field

Avenger Field

After the WASP museum, we went back "home" for lunch, before heading a few minutes out to the Pioneer City County Museum, also in Sweetwater. For more information, click here. The house was built for a local judge at the turn of the century, and then became a mortuary years later. Eventually the house was donated to the city, and much of the house was restored. There are many donated collections in the museum, to try to preserve the history of the area. I always love to see how life was like in the "old days" in different areas of the country, so I enjoyed this. However, before we went, I thought it was a museum of the pioneer people to the area, so it was much different than what I expected.

On the lower level, there is an extensive collection of Indian arrowheads. Tom liked this section a lot! Most of the arrowheads were found in the area. There is also a mammoth tusk, and various other interesting things found in the area.

Pioneer Museum-Sweetwater, TX

lots of items from the turn of the century in Sweetwater

cool collection of shells!

What? No stainless steel appliances and granite countertops? (I've watched HGTV this summer in Virginia!-ahhaha)

kitchen cabinets

isn't that beautiful?

Western Electric

depiction of the schoolhouse

hey...I had one of these in dark blue when I was a cheerleader in High School (Guess I'm pretty old!)

cool artwork made with Indian arrowheads

an impressive arrowhead collection

wouldn't you just love to find one while hiking?

lots of cool nooks and crannies in this house

upstairs (we weren't sure if we were allowed up here so we just stayed on the stairs for this pic)

It was nice to "get out of the house" for a bit to explore this area a little before settling in and doing laundry, especially after several days of driving all day. Haha!