Fourth of July at Kennedy Space Center

We got up early this morning and arrived at NASA by about 9:15. It is much nicer here in the mornings early!

We took a bus tour that took us as close as you are allowed to the big launch pads and the Vehicle Assembly Building. If you look behind us you can see one of the launch pads.

This is a closer look at a launch pad. This is where the Challenger was launched on it's last mission. You can see the launch pad and the path the crawler takes when it moves the assembled shuttle from the vehicle assembly building.

This is a close up of the building we could see from our camp last night. This building was built in the mid-sixties, and this is where many of the Apollo missions ships were assembled and all of the shuttles.

The tour was really cool. We got to see one of the Saturn V rockets that did not ever launch. It was amazingly huge. We also got to go into a building and see pieces of the space station that they are getting ready to send into space. The guide talked about how NASA is phasing out the shuttle next several years after the space station is completed, and how the Orion/Aries is the next big project. We ( as in the USA) will be sending men/women back to the moon to prepare for manned flights to Mars. We really enjoyed the day. It was neat to see so many areas up close that we had seen on tv. Keegan thought it was cool. Serena was pretty good until she got too tired.

The Right stuff crew.

This is a better group!

If there is something that is available to climb in/ on /under, our kids are all over it!

Kids at the beginning of the day looking very perky and patriotic.

Kids 8 hours later looking a little put out at another picture! This is the walkway that the Apollo 11 crew ( the first men on the moon) walked down to get to their ship.

Keegan is in front of a space shuttle that you could go up and get in. I had always wanted to know the actual size. We also did a space shuttle launch experience where you got into a simulator , and we felt like we were on the lauch pad. I could not imagine doing that for real. Keegan did it twice because Coley and I had to take turns because Serena was too short. He thought it was really cool.

We saw this fella floating along while we were at the Cape. KSC (Kennedy Space Center) is actually a wildlife refuge, and we saw all kinds of creatures today on our tour. We saw alligators, manatee, wild hogs, lots of birds, a dolphin, turtles, mullets ( jumping fish-not the hair style!), and bald eagles nests.

Tomorrow we might drive out to another wildlife area, and we need to hit the Astronaut Hall of Fame since the admission is part of our ticket. We went and viewed the local fireworks tonight, and after a tantrum on Serena's part, both kids are asleep!