The wife and I recently drove to Virginia Beach for the 2015 NAS Oceana airshow, as we have since 2003, (flying there in 2005 after I had heart surgery). It's not a bad trip and the route that we take goes up thru Arkansas and Tenn. The scenery isn't bad and going thru the mountains at this time of year is nice and colorful. It's a spend-two-nights-on-the-road drive, but we roll along at 70 or 75 mph so the time passes. However, rolling along so fast leaves you little time to react when something NEAT pops up. Please forgive my lack of specific details on location and I kick myself for not writing this down when it happened.
But we're rolling along on the Interstate and after awhile you get used to entering/exiting towns without noticing their names. I do remember that at this particular spot, the road was elevated a bit to where we could see into the back lots of
the businesses that were facing the service road that ran beside the highway, putting the back lots next to the highway. As we move down the highway, I notice something odd in the back lot of one business. It had wings and a tail and took up nearly the entire back lot. As we neared it, I immediately recognized it as an F-111. Swept wings, long nose.....yup. It was intact and sitting on its landing gear. It had not a bit of paint on it.
Another oddity, was there was no visible way in our quick look to discern how it got into the back lot or would be removed. The type of business wasn't indicated on any signage that we could see.
Again, we were on it and passed it so quickly, it was hard to get any minute details. I want to say it was in Tenn, but it could've been Arkansas.
Still, it made for a memorable (if quick) moment on the trip.
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