Tuesday 5/9/17
We said our sad goodbyes to Vero Beach and headed up to Kennedy Space Center. Fortunately we still had a lot of vacation left and it was great! We started out by touring the Rocket Garden, which was awesome in its own right. Then we saw a presentation on a possible journey to Mars in the future. From there we headed into the space shuttle area, walking under full-sized fuel tanks. Massive! We went into the building and up to a holding area where they showed clips of space travel, then into another holding area where they showed clips of space shuttle launches in 360 circle vision. Towards the end, the projection wall in front of us turned into a scrim that you could see through, then it raised. Right in front of us, in all its glory was the Space Shuttle Atlantis! Not a replica, THE Space Shuttle Atlantis! Yeah, a tear or two was shed. They took a few lessons from Disney on how to present something I think! It was so humbling to see that beautiful spaceship, knowing that it had actually gone into space and returned intact, 33 times! After enjoying that exhibit for quite a while we grabbed some lunch and then headed to the buses for a launch pad tour. We got to see so much of the pads which was fascinating in itself, but also learned that SpaceX was going to be rolling out a rocket to be launched in the next few days. They let us off at the Apollo/Saturn exhibit that carried our men to the moon. The sheer size of the Saturn V, holy cow! I swear one of the rocket boosters is bigger than our house! All of it was just amazing, and we all had a great time touring.
We stopped for a delicious supper at Aunt Catfish’s near Daytona Beach, right on the water and then stayed on A1A for a beautiful evening drive up to St. Augustine Beach, home for the next few days. When we got there it was pretty much a full moon, with not a cloud in the sky so we walked out to the beach. It was gorgeous with the moonlight reflecting on the water! And so bright we totally could have taken a walk! We were tired after a busy day so decided to hit the beds instead, and come out ready for tomorrow.