Air Power Park

A city park with fighter jets and rockets standing on the grass — the kind of place that exists because Hampton had NASA Langley next door and access to hardware nobody else could get.

Outside are a dozen or so aircraft and missiles you can walk right up to, including Cold War jets and full-scale rocket boosters. Inside, a free museum holds an unusually large collection of scale models, spacecraft mock-ups and aviation ephemera, staffed by volunteers who tend to know a lot. A short boardwalk crosses the marsh at the back of the site.

Free, open daily, and mostly empty. Half an hour is plenty unless someone in the party is an aviation enthusiast, in which case double it.