Ok, maybe its not quite remodeling. But I had my power tools out and was making some changes to our house while we had some down time in Manatee Hammock. There are several small and trivial things that we have to do on moving day….twice (once when we pack up and once when we unpack). But several small and trivial things add up to a bigger thing. So we tried to see if there were some quick solutions. Quick being the operative word. This trip is too short to spend too much time on home improvement.
Titusville
Cocoa beach and blast off
Our 5 days in Manatee Hammock were mostly spent at the campground but we did take one day to go check out Cocoa beach. Our neighbors, Mike and Pat, recommended the Lori Wilson beach and suggested the southernmost parking lot as it had good parking spaces for big trucks. Their directions were spot on and the beach was really nice. I needed to get some work done and I scored a phenomenal office site in the shade with a table!
Back in the hammock again
We were unable to line up a campground in Georgia so we moved back down to Manatee Hammock for several days after leaving St. Augustine. It really does seem like moving day is getting easier. We’ve all got our jobs and the boys especially are getting so they don’t need supervision for theirs. Having a full hookup site helps as I can dump tanks in parallel with other travel preparations going on.
When we took the garbage to the dumpster before we left the Pepper Tree “resort” I noticed a whole big pile of couches, chairs and carpet rolls piled by the dumpsters. We had a piece of carpet (free carpet remnant) we used on the vinyl floor at the beginning of the trip to help keep our feet warm in the cold temps. But for more than a month it has just been taking up room in the basement. I inquired if we could leave it with the other stuff and permission was granted….wooohooo, got rid of some stuff!
Birthday in the hammock
All my life I thought there was only one definition of the word hammock. But I’ve come to find out there are two:
1: a swinging couch or bed usually made of netting or canvas and slung by cords from supports at each end
2: a fertile area in the southern United States and especially Florida that is usually higher than its surroundings and that is characterized by hardwood vegetation and deep humus-rich soil
We learned about hardwood hammocks back in the Everglades and we were now staying at the Manatee Hammock campground in Titusville FL.
More space
Almost 12 years ago exactly I had business in Florida and brought Steph and baby Caden with me. We stopped by the Kennedy Space Center but given Caden’s age at the time and the high price of tickets we decided to wait until another visit to explore the facility completely. So here we are 12 years and 2 additional kids later. Back at the beginning of our adventure we did some space stuff as we gazed out into the heavens at a star party at McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis Texas. And now we are going to do more space stuff here at Kennedy Space Center. Ha…I bet you thought I was going to write about how we need more space in our house!
Shuttles and Rockets and Space Men Oh My!
The Kennedy Space Center was awesome! I had an amazing time! We saw a few people dressed up as astronauts but that wasn’t the cool part. There were at least ten rockets, one of which was huge and there was the shuttle Atlantis. We got to experience one of the best launch simulators which was really cool. After the simulator, to get back to the main building, you’d walk down a ramp and it had all of the shuttle missions, and their crew. We saw our friend Joe Tanner. He was on four shuttle missions and the funny thing was, on two signs it said Joe, and on the other two it said Joseph. There was a rocket garden with a bunch of the rockets from Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. The enormous Saturn V was in another rocket hanging from the ceiling and man it was huge! We saw an IMAX movie about exploration and mostly the new SLS, Space Launch System, and the capsule, Orion. Its a brilliant design and idea, and the coolest thing is, I am the perfect age to ride that rocket to Mars in the future! In the Atlantis building of course there was the Atlantis, and the launch simulator with the spiral ramp, but there was a second level where it showed what Atlantis’ reentry was like. You would start running and go up on a little tilted ramp, and if you didn’t try hard enough, which the Atlantis couldn’t, you’d go back down onto another then do it again and again and again. Here’s a picture I drew: After that little bit we waited in a little line to go down a steep slide that leveled out at the end. When it was my turn I raced Dacen. that wasn’t the fun part though. It was so fast and it felt like one of the huge waterslides at Water World without the water. Easily one of my favorite parts was, well the entire Saturn V building. I loved seeing the size of The rocket, the little astronaut van, the vault with some moon stuff and a journal thing that looks a lot like my math notebook. As I told you, I liked the whole building. I also liked the huge Rockets that carried the shuttle to space. They weren’t as big as the Saturn V but they were still huge.
Here are some existing rockets. Saturn V is the tallest one with the Shuttle next to it. As you can see, there is a huge difference.
Here’s me and the SRBs (solid rocket boosters) and ET (external tank) of Atlantis…I’m there at the base of the left booster.
I must go, the future awaits me,
Caden
P.S. If you haven’t watched the movie The Martian, Its in redbox right now and its really cool and has a lot of the things that they’re working on right now, like Orion.