VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A holiday tradition returns to the Military Aviation Museum in Pungo this weekend, and visitors will also find a new traveling exhibit making a stop in Hampton Roads through the end of the year.
The museum’s annual “Planes, Trains and Santa” event runs through Thanksgiving weekend, offering families the chance to explore elaborate model train displays and see Santa touch down at 10 a.m. each morning.
But this year, guests can also view “The Longest Yarn,” an over 200-foot-long textile exhibit visiting from France. The three-dimensional installation uses knit and crocheted scenes to depict key moments from the Battle of Normandy. It was created by over 100 artists in honor of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, including one artist from Hampton Roads.
The exhibit is currently touring the United States with only four scheduled stops.
As part of the display, the museum is selling knitted poppies for visitors to purchase. The goal is to fill an entire wall with the poppies and send them back to France as a gift from the museum to be displayed alongside the exhibit.
"Our goal here is to fill this entire white wall with poppies and to send that back to France with the exhibit as a gift from us back to the French, who will display this long term," Keegan Chetwynd, Director of the Military Aviation Museum, said.
Tickets are still available for “Planes, Trains and Santa.” More information is available here.
