Road trippin'!
Every now and again I get these ideas that just take off. This one, quite literally. I was playing on the NASA website one night and the next thing I knew I was planning a week-long camping trip to watch a shuttle launch. And I actually went through with the idea. I tried to convince several people to come with me but in the end just Alisha was crazy enough to agree. Which turned out to be a good thing because we were pretty stellar travel buddies and definitely did not have room in Casper for much else!
So, I got Casper all tuned up, bought tickets for the launch, reserved the campground, made extensive packing lists, practiced some Dutch ovening and finally hit the road on April 3rd. Oh yes. And I installed a new stereo in Casper. Almost by myself too. I had to call in a friend from work to help crimp the wires together but I was quite pleased with my attempt. And I LOVE the stereo because it integrates so well with my phone!
So now on to the pictures, in no particular order.
Can you see the space shuttle?!?! Can you see it?!?!
I calculated it up later and realized that we spent 24+ hours at the Kennedy Space Center over the course of 3 days. Mostly because we had to sleep in line there to get onto the causeway...but also because I was in space heaven. The gift shop! The Saturn V Museum! The Astronaut Hall of Fame! The Vehicular Assembly Building! The shuttle launch experience! That's not even all. There was too much to do and I was like a kid in a candy shop.
And there it goes! Space shuttle Discovery carrying the STS-131 crew to the International Space Station. The launch happens so fast. You wait for hours, crossing your fingers that it doesn't get scrubbed and then get really excited when all the final "go's" come in and the clock starts ticking at T -9 minutes. That 9 minutes flies by. Next thing you know they're announcing that the fuel tank is being jettisoned and the excitement is over. But the few seconds when the light is blinding and the shuttle is just taking off is pretty incredible. Especially when the sound finally reaches you.
Ascending in a blaze of fiery light! This is about the time when you finally "hear" the launch. It's so cool.
Beautiful contrails from the launch. It's funny because they warn you incessantly that these "may" contain trace amounts of harmful chemicals that might cause skin irritation. Bring it on. That'd be a cool story.
Oh the Mercury 7. Do I look legit?
Posin' in the Apollo command module!
We're here! This was a very happy moment in the trip.
Alabama!
Mississippi!
All in all, we covered Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. We spent about 48 hours driving and slept at rest stops in my car 3 nights. Never plan on sleeping in Georgia. They have hardly ANY rest stops and they're not that cool. Mississippi and Florida on the other hand are very accommodating. Mississippi even had free wifi!
We camped at Jetty Park whilst on space coast. I don't have the pics for that on my computer yet, but it was way fun. We got to watch the big cruise ships leave port, see dolphins swimming just feet away, and boogie board in some pretty big waves. The beach was very nice. And we camped next to some fun people from Georgia. And yes, I was a pansy and slept on an air mattress. The nights I actually slept...
Have a great day :)
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