Cape Canaveral

Dana has been working the past few weekends, so we haven't been able to do much traveling lately. She had this past Saturday off, so we decided to make a run out to the east coast of Florida to visit The Kennedy Space Center and check out the beaches. While planning the upcoming day's activities late Friday night, Dana found that there was a rocket launch planned for the next morning. We decided since we were going out that way anyways we might as well get up and be there for the launch. The only downside- the launch was at 7:07 am, we live 2 hours away, and it was already 10:30 or so at night. That didn't stop us, however, and we headed out of St. Petersburg at 4:30 am to get there in time. It went as planned(after Dana woke me up like 7 times), and we were sitting out on a dock about 13 miles away with 20 minutes to spare. While waiting, we got to view a beautiful Florida Sunrise...

Within a few minutes the Atlas V rocket launched as scheduled. The fireball at takeoff was easily visible from the 13 mile distance, and about a minute later the rumble from the blast was pretty amazing. I can't wait to experience this when there is a shuttle launch(Nov. 1).

The next picture is zoomed in at the trail left behind by the rocket. The sun just rising lit it up beautifully, and the sun rays shining through were amazing... the pictures don't really do it justice.

Here are a few more shots of the dock that we were at while watching. This was in Titusville, FL.

Next, we left Titusville and went to the Space Center to tour their visitor center and complex. That was a pretty neat experience, there is so much history at that one site. The first picture is of the launch complex that was used that morning for the Atlas V launch. The second is of the retired Enterprise shuttle. You are able to go inside of the bay of it with a view inside the cabin. It surprised us how small the shuttles actually are, especially the living quarters. The last picture is of Dana with one of the two current shuttle launch sites behind her. Good times.

-Grant