November 15 -- Fargo Air Museum

It was an easy, partly sunny five-hour trip to Fargo.
I drove up I-94 past the Twin Cities, then continued through towns with names like Fergus Falls, Pelican Rapids, and Downer. There was more pretty Wisconsin farmland along the way.

Fargo is combined with a Minnesota town called Moorehead. In Fargo, the North Dakota State University has a heavy presence and the town seems bustling. In fact, leaving the museum I listened to the “five o’clock gridlock report” on the radio.


The Fargo Air Museum is only six years old, and prides itself on being a “flying museum,” which means that virtually all the exhibits actually take to the sky. It is much smaller than EAA, with all the exhibits in one hangar, and the two hours I had to see it were plenty. I was able to find a very convenient parking place right next to the Minuteman II missile the museum displays in front of its facility.




Some of the highlights are a magnificent Japanese Zero fighter plane, which the museum director told me she believes is one of four in existence. As at EAA, there’s a great Mustang. The Fargo Air Museum also has two spectacular gull-wing Corsairs – one in blue WWII Marine Air Corps livery, the other a post-war racer in bright red and white competition colors. There’s a Dauntless dive-bomber just like the one the first George Bush was shot down in over the Pacific as a young aviator. All these planes had folding wings so they could be stored on aircraft carriers. There’s also a fun, bright yellow DC-3 that the museum uses to educate children about aircraft and to take them for rides.

In a particularly nice gesture, the museum maintains a wall of dog tags to honor the American members of the military killed in Iraq.


One of the great things about the museums I’ve been to on this trip is how friendly everyone’s been. Here, I met the museum director and she had a number of suggestions for me. In particular, she recommended a small Palm Springs aircraft museum with a tremendous director, a former interior decorator who is nonetheless knowledgeable about aircraft, and whom she described as “the cat’s meow” and “a real spice cadet.” Makes me sad to miss that one! She also recommended touring the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, which I’ll try to do.