The alarm went off at 5am eastern time.  Despite the relaxed evening before, we are all a little sleepy.  We wanted to get to the Kennedy Space Center at 9am, their opening time. It is a two and a half hour drive and factoring in a half hour for a bathroom break or two we needed to leave by six.  We actually left by 5:55, before the sun had even made an appearance.

Arrival time: 8:30, – 30 minutes before opening time. Anyone who knows us, knows this is a rare occurrence.  We were early!!!

After walking through the Rocket Garden we went to our first stop: Heroes and Legends.

10:00 – Bus Tour to the Apollo/Saturn V Center

Space Shuttle Crawler

The water tower next to the launch pad is there to cool the launch pad during takeoff.  The middle picture is of the heat shields in the pit below the shuttle.  The space shuttle crawler had its own gravel road near the regular road.  You can see permanent indents on the regular road from the crawler.

The kids were able to touch a moon rock.  Cody said, “It looks just like a rock from Earth from a volcano.” In fact, it was basalt.

This is a cleat from the space shuttle crawler.  Each cleat weights a ton, literally, 2,000 pounds.  The entire crawler weights six billion pounds.

1:00 – Grabbed some lunch/ got in a little rain shower.  Before we went running from the rain and into the van we sat a picnic table and moments later a squirrel dropped a bag of chocolate right behind Scott’s head.  Then the squirrel scurried down to pick his snack back up just to do the same thing again.  He eventually moved to another tree.

2:00 – IMAX Journey to Space 3D

3:00 – Astronaut Memorial and Atlantis

The kids tried their hand at working as an astronaut via a computer challenge.

This clear tube hung suspended twenty feet above the floor in a mock international space station for the kids.

The picture of the woman in the lab coat was to remind us about a classic Scott moment.  He went up to her with her NASA lab coat and nametag on and asked her, “Are you lost?”  She was a little flustered and taken aback, “Um…no. Why? I. I…um… work here. Why would I be lost?”  Scott smiled and responded, “Oh.  You just keep wondering around.” She laughed and said, “Yes. That’s my job.” She was a college student home for the summer working for NASA answering visitors’ questions.  We chatted with her for a while.  The middle picture is of all six of the space shuttles.  The first space shuttle never actually left Earth’s orbit, but the story of that shuttle is fun.  The name of the shuttle was changed to Enterprise after the public petitioned the president that the first shuttle should be named after the famous Star Trek Star Ship Enterprise.  The last picture is of the first prototype from the scientist who came up with the concept of a reusable space ship or the space shuttle.

These three pictures are of the space shuttle launching simulator.  Astronauts helped design and build the simulator and say it is almost spot on to what an actual launch feels like.  Cody’s little face on this ride was slightly green with giant white eyes.  It was fun and afterward Cody said it was great.

5:10 – 6:00 – Journey to Mars – the only building we weren’t super excited about. Still informative, but just not as exciting which is odd considering it is the current NASA mission focus.

6:00 – Presentation - Science on a Sphere – at the IMAX theater.  It was so incredibly cold inside the theaters.  We were all snuggling for warmth.  Especially after we had been soaked by an intense summer afternoon storm.  The kids kept putting me off on photo opportunities, but when we were on our way out they decided even if they had to do an air squat to pose due to the wet seat, they would finally get the photo inside the capsule done.

Incredible day!  We were there even past closing due to catching one more IMAX film, A Beautiful Plant 3D.  I had been looking forward to this day for over ten years!  Woohoo! Finally!

Originally we had packed spaghetti to cook at a picnic table for dinner. However, the steady rain had us looking for a plan B. We parked at a Chili’s and even opened the door to it, but then eyed the Five Guys across the parking lot and changed our meal plans. Now for the two more hours of driving time to home base.