Tuscon - Pima Air and Space Museum

Surrounded by desert and Saguaro cacti, the Pima Air & Space Museum is a beautiful museum in the south of Arizona. The museum is home to a ton of unique aircraft, most of them are saved from the neighboring boneyard.

Due to the large area, there is enough space between the aircraft so photography is decent. There are limited to no fences surrounding the aircraft, which means that one can view all frames up close, or search for some shade for the burning Arizona sun. When we visited in 2018, it was August and really hot outside. This meant that we could not explore the outside area as intensely as we would have liked, so we recommend not to visit Pima during summer.

Pima Air & Space Museum offers bus tours over the Air Power Reservoir, as the boneyard is officially called. Most people refer to it by its owner, the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARG. This tour is a unique visit on to the boneyard at Davis Monthan Air Force Base and shows a selection of the massive yard. Over a hundred airframes are being preserved or scrapped here, and several older USAF aircraft are still in relative good shape. We definitely recommend to take the tour as this adds value to your museum visit. Our tour guide was a former F-4 Phantom pilot, what a legend!