Florida Trip, part 1

We had so much fun on our trip to Florida. We went in mid-February and the weather was pretty good, just a bit chilly. You'd think that being from Utah,  a trip to Florida in February would be a welcome change from our usually harsh winters but this last winter was unseasonably warm. The temps were in the 60-70's in Utah and Florida. We flew in to Orlando for the graduation and rented a car. After the graduation we drove east to Titusville so that we could visit the Kennedy Space Center. That afternoon we visited Canaveral National Seashore and Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge.

Canaveral National Seashore

Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge at sunset

We saw our first little gator and got so excited. little did we know that by the end of the trip we'd be all gatored out. The next morning we went straight to the Kennedy Space Center. It was a bit pricey but totally worth it in my opinion. We took an extended tour where we got to see the launch pads for the Apollo Missions and the rocket assembly building. We also attempted to view a launch but it was scrapped 2 minutes before is was supposed to launch. It took them 3 or 4 more attempts to successfully launch the rocket. 

Hello Mr or Ms Astronaut

Space Shuttle Atlantis

We also saw the real space shuttle Atlantis complete with scorch marks from re-entry. The most interesting thing to me was the outside wasn't metal, it was like a quilt of carbon fiber pads so it looked very soft and fluffy.

Original Mission Control, moved from Houston

The Saturn V rocket was huge, that is all.

After we saw the Space Center we headed south towards Miami, or more specifically towards Biscayne National Park. Since I have a goal to visit all national parks we stopped by this one, even though we weren't really able to fully appreciate this mostly water park, because we didn't have a boat or snorkels. This is a good reason to come back. We did do a short hike and what we did see was beautiful. 

Biscayne Bay, gotta love the iPhone pano feature.