Tuesday - Today's agenda was the Boeing tour, at 1:30, so we had an easy morning, and headed out just before 11:00. The Boeing plant is on the north side of Seattle, in Mukilteo, which was only about 20 miles from us, and fortunately, we didn't have to go through Seattle. We found the plant, picked up our tickets, then drove across the street to find lunch. We got a recommendation from a lady talking on her phone in the parking lot of a small shopping center, and found our way to the Mexican restaurant she told us about, which was very good.
We had passed one of the Boeing buildings on our way in, and since we couldn't take photos on the tour, I snapped a quick one of this building, which we did not tour.
We couldn't take bags, phones or cameras on the tour with us, but we were allowed to take photos in the Future of Flight area which included gift shops, an exhibit floor and the balcony, so I was able to get a few photos. The flags hanging from the ceiling in the lobby, and I think represent the countries of Boeing's customers.
This is the photo of the exhibit floor.
The tour was very good, we got to see the production floor with planes in various stages of production. Here, they build 747, 767, 777,and 787. The photo below is a map of the plant layout which is on the floor of the lobby. An interesting tidbit our tour guide shared with us is that they do most of the moving of the planes at night. I think there were three reasons for this -- less traffic and things to deal with in the parking area where they roll them past, not wanting to distract drivers as they cross the overpass bridge, and I forgot the third one. But it made sense. They run three 8 1/2-hour shifts, 5 days a week, and employ 35,000. She also covered the price tag on these planes, ranging from the mid-$200 Million up to $400 Million for the new 777X.
The building we toured is proclaimed to be the largest building in the world (by volume). I think it was 90+ acres, and the entire property was 1,200+ acres.
An interesting plane we could see on the tarmac was the Dream Lifter, which was used to bring in parts for the 787 DreamLiner, flying parts in from Japan, Italy, Wichita and South Carolina. We actually got to see it getting to take off just as we were leaving the facility, and it flew over the top of us on the freeway (I could not find it in my camera lens).
We could see several planes from the observation deck, but none were moving around when we watched, except for the Dream Lifter.
We went back to the exhibit floor. Collins and Marilyn took a ride in a Blue Angels simulator.
Joe and I skipped that adventure and toured the Destiny module instead, which represents one of the labs used by the astronauts at the International Space Station.
The engines are huge, and Joe checked a couple of them out. They use Rolls Royce and GE engines, its customer-choice.
We watched a film about how Boeing got involved in the space program in 1968, then completed our tour and left. Collins and Marilyn are having trouble finding the next campground (availability problem again), so we stopped at a casino on the way home to see about their camping availability. We stayed for about 45 minutes, then made our next stop at the Verizon store. Marilyn was having a problem with her phone, and we needed to find out about our Canada coverage. Then we had dinner on the same parking lot, at Red Robin, and completed our night with a card game. Marilyn had baked brownies this morning, so we had treats to go with our cards, and the girls won, Again.
Jeff called this morning and told us he could have gotten us a "real" tour at Boeing if we had let him know, but we never know what we are doing very far in advance, so we didn't even think to call him. But we had a good tour, so we will just be satisfied with that.
Tomorrow is our Seattle City Tour, looking forward to that. The weather
is beautiful again, 87 I think, cool mornings and evenings. I packed rain jackets and umbrellas for Oregon and Washington, but so far haven't needed them. We had one misty day in Oregon, and the rain/snow day just before Bishop, California. Otherwise, we have had sunshine and very pleasant temperatures most of the time. Although we had some rain at home this week, we know we are lucky to be missing out on Arizona heat.
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