Jim and I just got back from a week in Florida. We went with my sister Pat and her husband Tom. We had a lot of fun but the weather was very hot and humid for October. The temps were in the mid 90s the whole time. We stayed at a really nice condo in Orlando and used that as our home base. The first Sunday that we were there we drove to Tampa to spend the day with our daughter and son in law, Sara and Chuck. We spent most of the day boating on the bay. We stopped at a really great restaurant that had boat docks so you could drive right up to the dock, and park your boat while you went inside to eat. Cool, I'd never done that before. We ended up boating into the gulf and went under the Sunshine Skyway. Way cool! We boated to a nearby island to look for shells and unfortunately Sara got stung by a stingray. We were told by Chuck and Sara to shuffle our feet when we walked in the water in case there were any stingrays or jellyfish on the bottom. Guess the little sucker got scared and wrapped his barbed tail around Sara's ankle. The only way to ease the pain is soaking the ankle in hot water to draw out the venom. Unfortunately, we were about a half hour boat ride away from home. So she was in a lot of pain, but she was a trooper and we made it back to the house in one piece. After soaking her ankle for two hours, she was able to walk around without too much pain. Thank goodness. I think I like fresh water better than salt water. The inhabitants are a lot more friendly.
Monday, we went to Kennedy Space Center and went on a tour. Very interesting place. We spent the whole day there.
They have buses that take you to the various buildings and then you can look around and then catch another bus to the next destination. Our bus driver mentioned that on Wednesday they would be moving the space shuttle Atlantis to the launch pad and that our tickets are good for an extra day. So on Wednesday we went back to the Space Center.
The trip from the Assembly Building to the launch pad takes 8 hours.
There is a launch pad observation tower that you can go to see the launch pad, but they close it down until the shuttle gets closer to the launch pad. By the time we arrived on Wednesday morning, the observation tower had been opened back up and we got to see an amazing sight. We spent an hour there watching the shuttle get closer and closer to the final launch sight.
The time lapse from the first picture to the last picture was around an hour. We felt pretty good about seeing this. Felt it was a once in a lifetime thing. Maybe sometime we can come back and see a shuttle launch. That would be awesome.
The rest of the week we spent relaxing around the pool and we also spent a day at Sea World. We are going back to Orlando for Thanksgiving and spending a whole week there with the whole family. Everyone is coming. So excited. I'll be sure to post lots of pictures.
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