Kennedy Space Center

You guys: Hayley Tyler has now been to the Kennedy Space Center, and her life is one step closer to being complete.

It is hard to put into words what I was feeling that day. I was a total geekazoid tourist; I was perfectly at home. At some points close to tears. Cheesy, I know, but it's the truth.

In typically Hayley fashion I fell asleep in the passenger seat on the 1-hr drive from our resort to the space center. When I awoke, the first thing that announced to me where we were was the looming Vehicle Assembly Building in the distance. I pointed it out to Brent and gazed and gazed and gazed until it was no longer in view.

As we approached the visitor parking lot I saw a sign that was flashing news about the space center. When I read the words, "Space Shuttle Endeavor is on Launch Pad 39a" I screamed and almost fell out of the car while it was moving. I hadn't dreamt I would be able to see a shuttle pointing toward the sky on a launch pad, but it appeared to be so.

Upon entrance of the visitor center Brent and I marched straight to catch our behind-the-scenes tour bus that we had purchased tickets for. I snapped this photo from my seat on the bus. Cute gate huh? Would any of you complain if I had this gate recreated for my home when we have a house?

Fun fact of the day: The Kennedy Space Center property doubles as a wildlife conservatory. There are many acres of open space within the KSC land, hundreds of marshes, and miles of rivers jetting out into the Atlantic Ocean. Therefore, this post will have a mixture of space nerd photos and pictures of birds and animals.

The Vehicle Assembly Building.

I found myself so jealous of the pelicans (and all of the other wildlife on the reserve). They have no idea of the PRIVILEGE of where they live. They have no way of appreciating the fact that they are sitting right across the water from the homes of the Endeavor, Discovery, and Atlantis. That whenever they please, they could fly to a high perch on top of the launch tower from which Apollo 11 left the Earth.

Dolphin fin.

The Vehicle Assembly Building, in all it's glory.

This is where the big orange external tank undocks after its voyage from somewhere in Louisiana.

This is the road that the space shuttle travels as it perches on the mobile launch platform on the giant crawler on its way to a launch pad. The giant crawler straddles the strip of grass, it's enormous wheels taking up the entire width of each rocky strip.

The highlight of my day. The Endeavor is just behind the external tank and the solid rocket boosters. Unfortunately this is the closest we got to seeing the actual shuttle. Even if we could have gone to a viewing location on the other side of the launch tower, the shuttle would have been hidden from view by the launch tower arm that covers it to protect it and provide easy access for the technicians that need to touch it up before its April 19th launch into space.

Is this picture for real? This is the closest the public is allowed to the launch pad. We were 800 meters away from it. On launch day, even this distance is too close. 800 meters away from the launch the sound waves alone would kill you. Three miles from the launch pad is the closest safe distance when those rockets start burning their fuel.

This bunker is left over from the Apollo days. I'm trying to remember what our tour guide said it was used for. It provided protection for some piece of equipment during each launch...wish I could remember what equipment that was.

The next stop on our tour took us to this close up view of the Vehicle Assembly Building. If I could just be on the technicians who gets to work in there, I would be perfectly content. Each shuttle gets prepped for launch for WEEKS in there before it is taken to the launch pad.

One of the giant crawlers.

An old married eagle and his wife, keeping watch over their nest. Did you know eagles mate for life? And return to the same nest every year to raise their next set of kids?

This guy was just chillin' in a marsh just yards away from the space shuttle re-entry runway. He was just one of the thousands of alligators on the KSC land, and one of 25+ that we saw that day.

After our behind the scenes bus tour, we got to view the Apollo era launch control center. These are the very computer consoles from which Apollo 11 and Apollo 13's launches were controlled.

A recovered Apollo command module.

A space helmet worn on the moon.

The underbelly of a full-size replica of a space shuttle on display at the KSC Visitor Complex.

These pictures still take my breath away. This is Hayley Tyler inside a (replica) space shuttle payload bay.

The Rocket Garden. So much history on display here.

The Space Center closed to the public at the shocking hour of 5, but somehow Brent and I managed to stay on the property till close to 6, snapping pictures and reveling in our patriotic fervor for the glory of our nation's space age.

It was the best. day. ever.

Our Time in Florida

Just over a week ago Brent and I came home from our week long vacation in Florida. We had a marvelous time together. We vacation so well together...we always have the same ideas at the same moment of what good vacationing is. We were best friends before this trip, but we became bestest friends on the trip.

We took something like 700+ pictures, and I promise to post only 75% of them on my blog. I've divided the pictures up between the different days of our trip, so each post will be about a different theme park or attraction. As for this first post, it will be about our trip in general and about the resort we stayed at.

Brent got all fancy with the camera on our flight over. Beautiful picture, huh?

Our first sighting of our resort as we exited the freeway. We stayed at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin. Well, to be more precise, we stayed at the Dolphin, whose triangular structure you can see pointing out above the Swan.

This, my friends, is the Dolphin, as it appears when you pull into the valet parking lot (before you realize that you need to go farther down the street to the self parking unless you want to pay mucho bucks).

View from our hotel window. The Swan was just across the lake...lagoon...pond...whatever.

To the left, the red and white buildings are Disney's Boardwalk Resort.

Our view of Epcot from our hotel room window.

Our view of Hollywood Studios from our hotel room window.

Night view of the place we called home for one week, taken near the Swan.

Beautiful.

I made us reservations for this steak house for our first night in Florida. It is inside the Dolphin, so we didn't have to go far. Don Shula's Steak House is themed after the 1972 Miami Dolphins' "Perfect Season." They serve the largest steaks I have ever seen in my life. I ordered the 32-oz prime rib and ate almost half of it. Brent ordered a porterhouse, and declared many times during our stay and a few times since we've been home that it was definitely in the top three steaks he's ever had the privilege of eating.

So why did we choose to stay at the Dolphin, you ask? Easy. We wanted to stay at a Walt Disney World resort from which we could either walk to all of the theme parks or have access to Disney World's amazingly efficient shuttle system. The Dolphin was the most affordable of all of the resorts. That's why we stayed there.

We visited many of the other resorts situated in different areas of Walt Disney World, and we found that by far, our location provided the most escape from the hubbub and frenzy of tourists. Walking "home" to our resort each night always had a calming and relaxing effect...it was often the only time of day when we had more than 5 feet of personal space outside of our room.

The Dolphin had a fantastic swimming pool, beach volleyball areas, hammocks, jacuzzis, tennis courts, basketball courts, you name it. We only found the time to use the swimming pool, jacuzzi and hammocks, but we found ourselves looking on longingly at families playing together in the other recreational areas as we hurried past them to bigger and better things, like the theme parks.

To end this post, I leave you with this picture. A topsy-turvy cake created by the chefs at the Cape May Cafe at Disney's Beach Club, a buffet style restaurant where Brent and I ate brunch our last morning in Orlando.

(To be honest, I'm struggling to come up with a way to tie in the last picture with the rest of this post...let's just pretend it belongs, ok? It needs a home.)