Forgot the camera!!

New rule for the Gossage Duo: No matter what we're going to do, we WILL take the camera!

We left the RV this morning to run to WalMart. Decided to go to a fresh produce stand on our way. When we left the produce stand, we decided to check out where the Farmer's Market is every Saturday morning. We found it and we also found the visitor's center and manatee observation tower. We decided that since the visitor's center was closed, we would check out the tower. We're not sure how many manatee we saw in the 15 - 20 minutes we watched! It was pretty neat though. They were really close (about 25 - 30 feet away) and came up every minute or so for air. That was cool! After leaving there, we saw a bridge over the intercoastal so we decided to see where that took us. We drove several miles on the island until we came to a Y in the road. One end was a dead end, but we had to see where it went! It went to a spot where a river flows into the Atlantic. We were walking out to the end of the breaks and as we passed a fish cleaning station, we passed three big pelicans so close we could almost reach out and touch them! (We soon discovered they were all along the breaks.)

So now we've seen 1 cardinal, 2 aligators, 2 turtles, 2 live armadillos, 1 bald eagle, ? manatee and 6-7 pelicans with no camera!!!!!! New rule ALWAYS TAKE YOUR CAMERA!

Kennedy Space Center

When Di and Rick offered to take us to the Kennedy Space Center for a tour, we jumped at the chance. We are still experiencing some of the high that you get when you watch a launch. Kennedy Space Center is only about an hour north of where we're parked. Going through the exhibits with an engineer who works on rockets makes it really interesting.

The big grey things on the side of the building are doors! This is the building where things going to space are assembled. Then they open the grey doors and move them out. They are then put on these HUGE crawlers and moved to the launch site (they get 42 feet per gallon and it takes 6-8 hours to reach a launch site).

We think this is the launch site where we saw the shuttle launched from last Friday night. It's hard to tell from where we were standing whether it was Pad A or Pad B.

This is a capsule the Apolo astronauts sat in. It's really small, but the Saturn rocket that launches it is the length of a football field (hard to get a picture of!)

The boys had fun with this fountain. The ball floats on water and the boys could push it around. They had fun and got a bit wet.

We got to see movies of the actual Apolo 11 launch and walking on the moon (in 3D) and we got to go on a shuttle simulator and play on a neat playground and walk through a shuttle and go to a kids play about going to Mars. What a fun day!!!

Shuttle Launch!!!

This is what we were looking at prior to the launch. Pretty dark, lots of people.

1955 hours (7:55 p.m.) lift off lit up the sky!!

Here she goes. It really didn't look like it was moving very fast AND we still couldn't hear the blast off.

Getting up there. Still quiet.

This is about where we heard the roar of the lift off! We could see the shuttle for quite awhile! Here's the story: We were camped in Pensacola and told Di that we'd camp in Cocoa on Thursday, then see them on Friday. She said she thought there was a shuttle launch scheduled for Friday night so we should check to see if we could stay 2 nights. We did and the lady who checked us in was very helpful. Her husband works for the Kennedy Space Center and she got out a map, showed us where to go and where to park and how early to get there. We actually arrived at the Shuttle park at about 4:30 p.m. to watch the launch at 7:55 p.m. It was a long wait and we met some really nice people from Connecticut, Florida, and Colorado! What a neat experience!

Driving through Louisiana was interesting. We went over a 14 mile bridge that went over swamp, a river, and some bayous. Pretty country though.

The USS Alabama in Mobile Bay was a real treat to see! We got to walk all over the destroyer and into the small cabins, etc. Then we went through a submarine. Talk about small compartments! The caption's office was about 6 feet square -- the biggest one on the sub! It was really neat to see.

What a day! We were picked up at 0830 this morning. We went to the Japanese Gardens that were built in a limestone rock quary. We went on a boat trip through the River Walk area downtown, it's built one level down from street level and it is really cool! We toured the Alamo and learned a lot of history about the mission and the area. We visited two other missions, both were really cool. This area was settled before the Revolutionary War, WOW, that's old. Our last stop was to visit a Mexican Marketplace. They had a lot of really cool stuff and it was really interesting to see the difference in styles. We got dropped off at the RV Park at 5:00 p.m. this evening VERY TIRED! It was a really good day.

Texas is a BIG state!

This picture was taken about 50 miles outside San Antonio, Texas. It is in the southern part of the hill country. It is very hilly and very pretty with lots of trees and brush and canyons and mesas.


This is another picture of the hill country north and west of San Antonio.

This picture was taken in west Texas, close to El Paso at Sierra Blanca Pass on I-10. We left Phoenix on 1 November arrived Texas late 2 November (stayed in El Paso) and this afternoon we arrived in San Antonio (we still have 300 miles until Louisiana!) We will be here a few days so we can visit this city. We're going on an all day tour tomorrow so I should have pictures (if I remember my camera.) What a beautiful state, we even had 3 deer in our campground this morning. This is a really cool adventure and I would recommend it to anyone!! The only problems I've had are 1. forgetting my camera and 2. not a good enough connection to post my blog.