The Swamp: Day 6 - Kennedy Space Center/Downtown Disney

I seem to have stopped before finishing my synopsis of our Florida honeymoon. I'm not entirely sure why the dry spell, though the last month or two have been emotionally draining, but I'll try to fill in what I can remember of Day 6. I apologize in advance as I know my recall of the day will not flow well, as it's a bit jumbled up in my brain. Luckily we have pictures, and I'll add them to my flickr site some time this weekend, which is linked on the right side of this page.

Before I do that though, for anyone who hasn't visited my better half's blog, we have a new addition to the family. I never thought I'd ever utter these words, but...we have purchased a cat. That's right, a C-A-T. No, hell has not frozen over, but I do love my wife, and she is after all a cat person, which I knew before I married her, so we went out together and purchased a stray from the local animal shelter. The next stop was at the local Petsmart, where I imagine the receipt total was easily more than the cat cost.

Taylor named her Lola...Here she is with what was to become her wooby. It's the first toy she played with, and she carries it around the house with her and leaves pink feathers on the carpet.

Her food bowl, water and bed are under the end table next to my recliner, since that is the first place she went when we let her out of the box. The sliding patio door is just behind her and she loves to watch the birds and squirrels.

Lying next to the box she came in.

I have to say, I'm surprised that this cat was still at the shelter. She's such a sweet and loving animal and if I'm not careful, she may break through my surly anti-cat exterior. I'm sure if you asked my wife, she would tell you she's done that already, but I have to keep up appearances, at least for a little while.

Anyway, on to day 6 - Kennedy Space Center

We were hoping to see a shuttle launch since one was scheduled to lift off while we were in Florida, but alas, it was not to be. The hail damage from the month prior grounded the shuttle until well after we were to leave town. It was decided therefore to visit Kennedy Space Center on a day that showed the highest promise of rain, which pushed our plans to visit Sea World to day 7.

There were 3 stops on our tour of the space center, the first of which was the observation gantry located between the current launch platform and the vehicle assembly building, which is the tallest single story structure in the world. Located next to the vehicle assembly building sat the Crawler Transporter, which has an astonishing fuel efficiency of 150 gallons per mile. You read that right folks, though granted it's max loaded speed is one mile per hour.

In one building was I believe a rocket from the Apollo missions that was built as a backup, but was never used.

We also saw pieces of the international space station, both under construction and complete and ready for loading. I think this was on the 3rd stop of the tour, but I'm not entirely sure anymore.

The remaining stop was at the old mission control, which was set up to simulate being present during a lift off, complete with countdown, lit computers and switches, rattling windows and surround sound of the engines during lift off.

After leaving NASA, we went to check out Downtown Disney, just to see what was there. We've marked it mentally for a place to spend more time if we ever get to visit Orlando again.