On September 4th and during Labor Day weekend, I attended AirFest, which is an annual event with live music, food trucks, vendors, activities for kids, displaying WWII aircraft, and presenting scheduled flights for those who want to experience what it’s like to ride in one. It’s located in the Naval Air Station Wildwood (NASW) Aviation Museum in Rio Grande, NJ (15 minutes drive to Cape May). I enjoy walking through museums, if you don’t know me already — I can be a museum enthusiast, especially with displays that are deprived from a historical event. The idea of visiting an aviation museum for the first time was exhilarating. My boyfriend and I took off the road 2 hours away from Central Jersey to drive to the museum.
Here are some facts about the museum (you can find more on their site here):
- This base is a part of Cape May Airport, so essentially you’ll see planes flying in and out
- The place was commissioned on April 1, 1943.
- NASW used to be called Naval Air Station Rio Grande (after it’s city of course) but it was changed to avoid confusion with Rio Grande, Texas.
- There has been about 129 crashes that occurred on or around the base.
- There are 42 known airmen that have died training at this base.
- From 1943 to 1945, NASW used to be an active-bombing training area for US Naval aviators.
I knew I had to bring my history buff boyfriend to this museum with me. I was really uninformed about military vehicles until my boyfriend was able to play ‘tour guide’ for me and walk me through with the functions, names, and the history of the planes. After our tour of the museum, we drove to Cape May and explored Cape May’s famous Washington Street Mall area, which is an array of shops and restaurants connecting to each other. After camping and being in Cape May for the first time last month, I fell in love with the quaint beach town. I had mentioned before that I was hoping on returning again to explore more of the town and indeed, I did!
Here are the photos that I took on the AirFest day and exploring Cape May (with some captions of course):
Cape May
After walking around to explore, we decided to try to find a restaurant to eat dinner in and just settled for this bar & restaurant place called The Ugly Mug.
Sad to say that is summer is nearly ending but this was one of my highlight visits for the summer! Always looking forward to visiting Cape May for next summer again.
