Florida Vacation

This long weekend we flew down to Orlando, Florida for a short vacation. As you'd expect we stayed at Disney World. Last year we stayed at the Boardwalk but this time we stayed at the Wilderness Lodge. It had a Pacific Northwest, log cabin feel to it. And you LOVED it. I think if we ever move back to Seattle we'll need to get a log cabin nearby. I think at heart you are an outdoorsy girl who likes the city rather than the other way around.

Since we had fewer days to play we skipped Epcot Center this time. We ended up going to Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, AND...

We drove over to Titusville which is where NASA has most of their operations. In particular the Kennedy Space Center which is a tourist park that also has tours. The park itself was fun. They had a realistic space shuttle along with a separate display of the solid rocket boosters (SRB) and external tank (the orange thing), a launch simulation, a rocket garden with real versions of most of the early rockets including the Saturn IB and the Titan II (Gemini missions). We then hopped on a bus and went for a tour of the actual operational sites including the Vehicular Assembly Building (VAB) where they put the rockets together, the crawler tracks which is the "road" to move the rockets to the launch pad, the crawler and platform which actually moves the rockets, plus some launch sites. Lucky for us the Space Shuttle Discovery was on launchpad 39A and just launched today as I write this. We missed the launch but saw the video.

I was most concerned when I realized the Saturn IB wasn't a Saturn V. Saturn V is the rocket that took us to the moon. I thought when we walked in, it was a Saturn V. But looking at it more closely I realized it wasn't. I couldn't understand why they didn't have one.

But it turned out they did. They had a great exhibit hall off the main park that was part of the tour. Inside was a GIANT Saturn V rocket. The whole thing. It was enormous! Unfortunately at that point you were getting tired so we didn't stay as long as I would have liked. They also had a command module on display from Apollo 14, a moon rock, a and some vintage space suits. It was a great exhibit.

And we got to see real alligators around the whole locale. And also a bald eagle.

Here are some of the videos from the trip. I split them up so it wasn't a huge video like last time.