♪♪ [Kohlsdorf] Next, we're heading south along the Loess Hills Scenic Byway to the largest city in northwest Iowa, Sioux City, a city that is rich in aviation history.

♪♪ [Tim Seaman] We're the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation and we have a little bit of all of that whether it's planes, we have military helicopters, we have military vehicles, a couple of ambulances from the days gone by.

We have small, private, personal aircraft.

This is an experimental plane that I'm standing in front of right now.

There's also automobiles from many years gone by.

And there's artifacts all throughout this museum whether it's pictures, it's clothing, it's medallions from different types of military acknowledgements.

It's a collection of many things.

♪♪ [Rick Alter] We start with World War I and you walk around the museum, you get to World War II.

We have some commercial exhibits over here, airline exhibits around to the home-built airplanes and a couple of regular general aviation airplanes.

We have a huge transport plane outside.

Twice we've had people come in here and they say, I flew that airplane, I flew it in Alaska.

Well, it's here now.

[Tim Seaman] We acquired that plane in 2009 with help from the Gilchrist Foundation and also AmeriCorps.

We got a third grant from FedEx to actually implement our education classroom that is in there.

We've designed it as kind of a STEM classroom.

♪♪ [Tim Seaman] There are museums that you go to that there are a lot of signs that say don't touch.

And we have some of those.

But that's what is really cool about this place.

You can climb up in the plane and sit in the plane like you're the pilot.

We have a helicopter, a military Huey helicopter that you can climb up in, you can lay on the medical bed like you're being evacuated or you can sit in the pilot's seat.

So, it's really an interactive place and I think young people especially appreciate that.

♪♪ [Tim Seaman] It's a collection of history.

It's a place where you can go back in time and see the way things were at one point and see also how things are today whether you're talking about aviation or you're talking about transportation from the planes, the vehicles, our education center, the United Flight 232 memorial and section of this museum.

It's a tragic exhibit, but yet it's heartwarming too because so many people did survive.

It has I think a special place with most people in Sioux City because it affected our entire community.

♪♪ [Rick Alter] I just think it's great that we're able to preserve history.

And we do that through the last hundred years' worth of stuff we have in here.

It's just a great place.

We have a little bit of everything.

And people walk in and say my gosh, I never knew this was here.

This is fantastic.

Kids love it too.

[Tim Seaman] It's a collection of history that lets you relive past history and also kind of see where we're headed.

It can be a quick stop or you can spend half your day here depending up on how much time you have.

You're not going to find this anywhere else along the Loess Hills Byway.

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