Kennedy Space Center

We debated about spending our last day in Florida in the Tampa area, doing something in Orlando, or going to the Space Center.  I would love to spend more time on the Gulf Coast sometime, but since the shuttle program will be ending in just a few months, we decided to go to Cape Canaveral to the Kennedy Space Center.  Dave & Judy had flown out of Tampa early Saturday morning.  We took Aunt Fern out to breakfast at Bob Evans, one of her favorite breakfast restaurants.  After a nice meal we said our good-byes and drove our trusty Impala rental car back to the east coast.  After a couple of detours, we managed to arrive at the space center around noon, bought our tickets, and were ready to explore.  I hadn't known that the Kennedy Space Center is on 140,000 acres.  They only use a small part of it, so the rest is left as a natural wildlife refuge.  Supposedly there are 4000-6000 alligators, but we never saw one, even in the pond they said they were often seen.  They also have numerous kinds of birds, manatees, and many other types of wildlife.  We did see a huge eagle's nest, but that was it.

 The shuttle Explorer

inside the shuttle cargo bay 

We did a ride called the Shuttle Launch Experience.  We stood in line for a while and appreciated the shade and misters.  They show videos hyping up the ride, how exciting it all is, we finally get into lines ready to enter the rows of the ride... and find out it has to be reset as something happened to it the last ride.  After all that, it turned out to be a pretty tame ride.  It simulates what it feels and looks like to take off in the shuttle launch.  

There are many things to see at the visitor center, including two IMAX theaters, an astronaut encounter where you can hear stories from veteran astronauts, have lunch with an astronaut, rocket displays, restaurant, gift shop, etc.  Every 15 minutes big buses leave the visitor center for tours of the rest of the space center.  The tour takes about 2-3 hours and we enjoyed that more than the visitor complex.  There are three tour stops - the LC-39 Observation Gantry, the Apollo/Saturn V Center, and the International Space Station Center.  Each stop has displays and a couple of  them have movies to watch about what is done there.  You can see the room where the shuttles are prepared for their  missions.  

transporter

display in the Apollo/Saturn center

the launch pad

the rockets of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo

As the day came to a close, we drove back to Orlando, checked into our hotel and went out to dinner at Tony Romo's.  Warren then returned the car to the airport.  It had only 6 miles on it when we got it the week before, and when returned, had 1006.  Sunday morning we got up early, took the hotel shuttle to the airport and flew out to Minneapolis, then on to Billings, arriving there about 12:30 noon local time.  We had a great lunch and visit with Rhonda, Kayla, Dane & Greg.  Thanks to Ron & Mary Ann for keeping our yukon in their driveway while we were gone.  :)  It was a great trip!