Kennedy Space Center and scrubbed ARES Rocket Launch

OK...at O' dark thirty (2:00am EST) we got up for the 2 hour drive from Tampa to Cape Canaveral. We had to be at KSC (Kennedy Space Center) by 5:30am to get in for the rocket launch scheduled for sometime between 8am and noon. Still haven't figured out why as the place was a ghost town until around 8am. It was cool and empty however so we could wander about and see many of the exhibits before the normal crowds arrived.














Seemed like we were a hundred miles from the launch pad. We later found out that during experimental launches they don't allow anyone on the causeways. You can only get tickets for that location for shuttle launches. So we all wandered about the shuttle demo and other exhibits until the first countdown around 9am. First round was stopped at T minus 4 minutes for weather. An hour later it was restarted and abruptly canceled because some moron cargo ship had wandered into the splashdown area. This postponed the launch restart for another 30 minutes. By 10am Nick and I were in nap mode as you can see...haha

They started and stopped the countdown 3 more times for a "weather window". The winds were at 2o knots which was too high for a launch :( Finally at 11:30am they scrubbed the launch for the day....there were a lot of people that were bummed (including us). We watched from the airport the next day as the rocket finally launched!

At noon we boarded the bus for the tour of the Apollo Launch Center and walked under the massive Saturn V rocket. It brought back a lot of childhood memories having experienced much of the Apollo missions growing up! We also toured the assembly and staging building for all Space Station cargo. It was pretty awesome seeing all the stuff we're blasting up there! Overall the trip was lots of fun, but a VERY LONG day after driving 2 hours back to Tampa and straight to bed.

Thus ended our 10 days of fun on the Caribbean Seas and central Florida, both west and east coasts!!!! Hope you all enjoyed viewing the trip as much as we did doing it.......