Sea To Space

We made it to thrifty rental car in the Fort Lauderdale Airport rental car terminal, and after agreeing to pay Thrifty all our remaining money we were told we could go out into the garage and pick out any full size car we wanted.

The red Mercedes convertible caught my eye right off and we would have taken it except our baggage wouldn’t fit in the trunk. We had to settle for a blue Jeep

Don't Let Willie Drive

 

After loading our gear, and clearing the garage check point we headed out into Florida, the captain of our own little ship, or Jeep as it is. We headed north on highway 1 through miles and miles of cities that all looked the same.

Going was slow on highway 1, what with traffic lights that seemed to always turn red as we approached, and I was getting dizzy watching a Walgreens roll by about every 15 miles or so. I think it took aboot 3 hours to travel 60 miles.  We needed another road, we needed some lunch, and we needed to regain our survival skills that are rusty after weeks at sea…

We found a lighthouse next to a sea food restaurant, and parked our jeep. The food wasn’t quite the same as on the ship, and we had to pay but the food did us good and before long we were north bound on the Interstate closing in on our destination Florida’s Space coast.

By accident we found the Motor Companies Space coast outpost and stopped there for curios and fancy togs with the outpost’s logo…

Our first night we rested at the Apollo Inn, before moving to Cocoa Beach to be nearer to the Kennedy Space Center.

The space program is by far the greatest thing we have ever done as a nation and the NASA Kennedy Space Center does not disappoint.

 

After entering the visitors center we checked out the display of the rockets used in the space program then boarded a NASA bus driven by a feisty little lady with bright orange finger nails, and maybe toe nails to match, but I will never know as she wore boots.

Our Bus Driver

 

She spoke aboot the space program of the past and was excited aboot the future Orion human mission to mars. She took us past the huge vehicle assembly building where the Orion space craft is being assembled.

 

NASA Vehicle Assembly Building

 

She took us by the launch pads where every manned space mission has taken off from, and then dumped us off at the Apollo Launch Control Building, where we watched a nicely presented launch of an Apollo space craft.

Apollo Launch Control

 

The rocket takes off and the doors open into a cavernous building that houses a spare rocket from the Apollo program mounted for inspection..

Back on the bus there is hardly time to make it into the Shuttle display where the actual space shuttle Atlantis is housed…

Space Shuttle Atlantis

 

Space exploration is not without risks and the building also contains a touching  memorial display with personal items from the astronauts from the Challenger and Columbia Shuttles.

We watched the last showing of a 3 d I max movie aboot space exploration and the center was mostly empty as we walked back out to our car wondering how a nation that could aspire for peace, science, and exploration turned into the groveling greedy consumer capitalistic  war industrial power nation that would destroy the very workers that built the hardware for the space program, but then it was Tuesday in Florida and a major sexiest racist homophobic, corporate shill had just won the regressive presidential primary and is well on his way to destroying the middle class.

 Only in amerika….