Moses Lake, Part 2

Keechelus Lake, Snoqualmie Pass area.  I-90 in the foreground.

I've started reading SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson and we find ourselves driving east on Interstate 90 in Washington State, heading over Snoqualmie Pass. Hey! I was just there. I'll bet Neal was inspired by my blog post. Not. Still, it was pretty cool to be reading about a place I had just been.

Central Washington, Snoqualmie Pass (upper left) to Moses Lake (right center)
Yakima (bottom center)

Doob, the character driving, is headed to Moses Lake. Me, I turned south at Ellensberg heading for Yakima. Doob is headed to Moses Lake because there is an enormous airport there, a relic left over from the cold war. 

Big Hangar at Grant County International Airport
That gray strip cutting across the upper part of the picture is the runway

The runway is more than two miles long, and according to Wikipedia, it has one gigantic hangar that the Strategic Air Command used to house eight B-52's. The hangar has been taken over by a company that manufactures high lift work platforms. This is the only decent photo I could find of the place.

The airport is being used mostly for testing now, but occasionally it comes in handy for moving things.

Moses Lake

Antonov-225

Back in May of 2012 the six-engine Antonov An-225 Mriya flew into the airport at Moses Lake, Washington, to deliver two mammoth winches destined for the Alaskan oil fields. While the Antonov could have landed at Sea-Tac International Airport, it was too large to park. At Sea-Tac, there was no area to put the plane once it landed. From a story in the Puget Sound Business Journal

Another case of an Antonov landing at an old SAC airbase.

Parked

Airliners parked at Grant County International Airport

What makes this photo special is Grant County International Airport is a former SAC airbase in Moses Lake Washington. We've been there before.