On Hwy-99, 7 miles North of Merced. Life in the little community of Atwater revolves around the Castle Air Force Base, a military flying school opened during the 1940s and currently training the crews of the U.S. Air Force’s long distance bombers. Clearly not first choice among pacifists as a place to spend an afternoon, the Castle Air Museum (www.castleairmuseum.org) displays dozens of aircraft which dropped their explosive loads in conflicts from the Second World War to Vietnam, and quite a few from later years which never had the chance to take off in anger.