Our Tucson area trek included a visit to the Pima Air & Space Museum.
It's my understanding that Pima is the largest privately-funded, nongovernmental air & space museum. In the U.S. only the Smithsonian and The National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson are larger. Pima has a variety of military and civilian/commercial aircraft on display numbering 300+. It has several indoor hangars, plus outside walking tours (on your own or even via a tram).
We did the tram ride and it was most informative. It takes about an hour and I recommend it to get a wonderful overview of the outside exhibits. Our guide was a former Air Force pilot who described the aircraft and provided some very interesting anecdotal information. This allowed us to decide which to later walk to in order to get a better and more detailed view. Far too many aircraft inside and outside to post here, so here is a sampling.
We ran the lunar lander simulator and got scores of 13 and 15. We ended our tour with a walk on the moon!
After the tram ride we took a short walking tour on our own:
The museum includes exhibits of both fixed wing and rotating aircraft, and interactive stuff.
