That's no moon...

For the final day of our "Visit the Hageman's in Florida" trip, the group headed out to Kennedy Space Center (i.e. NASA, the cool part anyway). We saw lots of space ships, an eagle nest, an alligator, and parts for the space station - all to the theme from The Wrath of Kahn. Seriously, at the stop where you see me posing in front of Endeavor, they were playing through the whole soundtrack for Wrath of Kahn in the background. Anyhow, on to the pictures!

Here's the group on approach:



And here's where the bus tour begins:



I was initially a bit suspicious of the but tour, but it turned out to be really cool. They had 3 sites throughout the compound. At each site, you could stay as long as you liked, and a bus left for the next point of interest every 10 minutes. Once you were done, you just hopped on the next bus and saw more cool stuff. For 3 of 4 of our rides, we got a very fun driver too. That helped a lot.

Here's me with Endeavor on the pad in the background (we had just climbed an observation tour at the first stop):



Our bus driver was cool. He spotted this gator, then slowed down for pictures:



Zoomed in on the circle:



This was the fourth gator (sixth, counting unverified upstream floaters) we saw on the trip and the only I managed to get on bits.

Annika and Daniel decided to try out the space strollers:



(Though, like all the other awesome space technology in that place, they appeared to be about 50 years old.)

Here's me with what's left of the Explorer orbiter (I call it a spaceship) and an astronaut plane:



And here's Julie with her rocket collection:



In other news, I think I finally diagnosed my allergy to Florida. I had a bunch of itchy spots all over my body, similar to poison ivy, during most of the trip. I think it was miliaria (a.k.a. heat rash). Yup, a problems babies have. Evidently, about a 3rd of grown ups can get it. From what I've read, Will's skin fungus diagnoses was pretty close. Tropical crud clogs your pores, then your sweat gets stuck. And itches. Boo. Now that I'm back in Kansas, the spots are diminishing fairly quickly.

Comments

Milhous said…
Wow, I did not know that Julies rocket collection was so big.
4 is More said…
I notice that the cool picture of the gator did not make the cut of Julie's post pictures. Man. :)

It is HOT here today. I think the weather knows that you left.

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