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

What I Miss About Texas: Part 1

Howdy people! Just a quick hello from the Sunshine State. Actually, the sun has been out way more lately (and work is totally getting in my way...). Here is my top 5 list of "What I Miss About Texas."

5. The Lone Star mentality. We Texans are proud of where we are from. I didn't know what the Florida flag looked like til yesterday (oh, and the Tejas flag is waaaayyyyy cooler).



VS.

4. SALSA! Let me re-phrase: good, hot salsa. All we get is what I make, but I think I'm improving with each batch.

3. Dry-ness. It is ALWAYS humid here. Like really, really humid. My hair looks wet when I come inside sometimes. It's a little gross.

2. Texas country music! Some Cory Morrow or Randy Rogerss not on a CD would suit me fine right about now. On that note, Shooter Jennings (Waylon Jennings' son) is going to be in St. Pete in September and I cannot wait. It may be more Southern Rock, but hey it is as good as it gets here.

1. My People! I miss everyone...

Here is a picture of my ladies and me...

Mi familia.

-Dana

Fishing...

Welcome to Florida is right! Look at what we came home to last Sunday!

Not really.

As the weeks have gone by we have become busier and busier with work.. sad, I know. Because of this, we have tried to spend all of our free time outdoors (when it's not raining anyways). The past couple weekends we spent our free time "fishing," better phrased "drinking beer while holding a fishing rod." Haven't caught a thing, but it's still great to be outdoors. Come to think of it, I have never seen anyone catch a fish where we have been fishing- I think I will try a new spot next time.

The little beach near us, really just a shoreline on Tampa Bay, is only a 5 or 10 minute drive and allows you drive right up to the waterline. That brings back fond memories of Texas beaches, where you dont have to haul all your crap 13 miles just to enjoy the beach! But I digress.. this little shoreline is known to the locals as the Hillbilly Beach because you can pretty well do as you please with no interference. The true beaches here are quite the opposite, no pets, no alcohol, no cars, no anything fun. They are pretty though.

I'm rambling... lets get to the pictures.

Right before I didn't catch anything.

Power Plant View... apparently we will be able to see Manatees here in the cooler months as they enjoy the warm waters coming out of the discharge pipes.

Looking out towards Tampa.

Rusty and Wife.

Wife, Rusty, and Bronco.

The crabs kept to themselves, luckily. We didn't want any.

-Grant

4th of July

We had big plans as we approached the 4th of July weekend- I had Friday and Monday off, so we planned to take a trip down to Venice Beach to relax and begin seeing the rest of Florida. That however, didn't quite work out as we had another weekend of almost non stop raining.

Although the fun beach plans were ruined, it did give us a chance to get the apartment in better shape. We have officially unpacked everything. Finally.

Luckily, Sunday evening had a brief break in the rain... just long enough for some fireworks on the beach. We made our way down to St Pete Beach and spent the evening watching the city's planned fireworks, and dodging those of everyone else on the beach. Here are a few pictures from the evening:

-Grant

Beach Trip Numero Dos

So we promise that apartment pictures will eventually be posted, but traveling to the beach is a ton more fun than cleaning and unpacking to make that happen. Last night we decided to make an evening beach trip for some photo taking and swimming (me photo taking with the new camera, Dana swimming). On the way there we figured that the night would be a bust as we drove through rain with heavy cloud cover, however, as Florida is proving to us, they seem to have beautiful sunsets almost daily.

As evidenced by the upcoming pictures, I have a photo taking problem and will probably be posting a lot of them.

bird.

When we first traveled to the beach we began picking up a lot of shells cause they looked pretty, but soon realized that we are able to be more picky here than back in Texas. Shells everywhere.

wife.

lifesize dolphins... which Dana immediately kicked over, while yelling "O'Doyle Rules!"

...not really.

Beach Trip Numero Uno

Last weekend, Grant and I took our 1st official trip to the beach! We went to Indian Rocks (there are about 20 billion different beaches here…). It was beautiful. There were few waves and clear water but it was a little crowded… We are going to explore another beach this weekend so we will keep you posted.

cute birds!

white sand, clear water = happy Saturday

our set-up!

Road Trip!

Well if you haven’t heard yet, WE MADE IT! Over the very exciting weekend of June 18-19, Grant and I made the journey to Florida. Google puts the trip at 1113 miles and about 20 hours. Fun times, right?

Adios Dallas!

It wasn’t that easy though. Right before we got to the thriving metropolis of Tyler, Texas, Grant’s coolant lands all over our feet. So, to make a long story short (er), we “picnicked” for four hours in Tyler while the hose was fixed.

(On a side note--thank you men of Firestone, on that Saturday afternoon yall were my heros)

Our "picnic"

Anyways with our initial plan, we left about 4-5 hours in to sleep. Oh well, one hour in the Mobile, Alabama Walmart parking lot was fun too!

27 hours later I rolled into St. Pete (Grant was about 2 hours behind me..did I mention that because of good engineering on the park of Uhaul, that the bronco/trailer combo couldn’t go faster than 60?? No…well that was fun too).

Well here are the 3 things I learned on the trip:

1. Book on tape = amazing. It kept me alive through Louisiana. Oh and people awake at 3am in Louisiana are most likely up to no good.

2. Calories don’t count at 5 in the morning in Alabama. Its all about survival at that point.

3. Grant is more amazing than I knew. He didn’t complain once (and he had to continue to drive 60 while I sped ahead when we got to Florida!). I’d like to pretend I didn’t but hour #4 in Tyler took its toll on me.

~Dana