3......2......1....Blastoff!

Thursday night, before we left our hotel, we did a load of laundry or two (that was nice...coming home with little amounts of dirty clothes!), we packed up so Friday morning we could head out first thing and drive to see the space shuttle launch.

Now, tickets to get in to watch from Kennedy Space Center were somewhere around $50/person. And they were all sold out. However, you can watch from pretty much anywhere in the area. So after some research and some tips from friends, I decided we would drive to Titusville and try to get to Space View Park to park and watch from there. The shuttle launch pad was just across the river from there and only a couple miles (maybe???) away, yet a clear view. I thought, with over 750,000 people in the area, that might be our best bet at last minute plan to go watch. We were supposed to be headed home, but so many people told us if we were *that* close and had the oppportunity, we really should go watch it. Especially since this perhaps the last shuttle launch ever. :(

So, Titusville is a little over an hour from where we were at DisneyWorld. Launch time was at 11:26am. I figured traffic would be bad, but the earliest we could manage to pack up, load up and check out of the hotel to actually get on the road was about 9am. So we left our place at 9am. We headed that way. When we got about 30 minutes away was when the traffic started. It wasn't stopped. It was just sloooooow. It took us about 1 hour and a half to go that last 30 minutes.

Finally as we were getting in to Titusville, the cars and parking lots starting looking full. People walking and walking (towards the river bank...yet we were still 5 miles away!). It was just after 11am. People were charging $15 to park in their driveway. Our navigation told us we were still 3-4 miles away from this Space View Park! No way would my kids be able to walk 4 miles... I was starting to think we were going to miss it. I was asking Brad if he thinks we should just park somewhere. Obviously these people couldn't get any closer, right? But we just kept puddling on in to closer and closer to the river. The streets got more and more crowded. There was hardly room for one car to drive down this supposed two way street! At this point it was about 11:15 and I was thinking...well, ok. sigh. We will just have to watch it from our car as we were 'driving'. (we were only able to go about 5 mph anyway) At least we would see it. sigh.

Finally, we get to where we come to a "T" at the river bank. I look to my left and there is a bridge, that I guess goes over into Kennedy Space Center? Not sure. But they had the bridge closed off at this point. And I saw this....

Holy cow! That's a LOT of people. Looked like cattle packed in there. I couldn't believe it! So, at the "T", we went right. It was our only option. Now, we were slowly creeping along the river bank roadside. The road was barely the width of one car. People parked on the side of the road, on the banks, in driveways, everywhere and anywhere you could think. I tell Brad (I still wasn't sure where the actual shuttle would be) that we are just stuck driving, so just drive slow so that maybe we can time it where we will be able to see it from the car. When all of the sudden, there is a guy across the road from the river (literally about 8 feet away) with a sign - "$20 to park" and a few spots open in his back driveway. Heck yea!

We paid that $20. Got out of the car, walked across the road and were standing there waiting for the shuttle at 11:20. (remember launch time was 11:26?). Could we have worked it any better??? We soooo lucked out.

There were several people already sitting out, that had been camping out apparently!, on the banks so we just got in among them and waited.

The guy next to us has his radio tuned to the NASA channel, so we were getting live updates/feeds/countdowns. There was a slight delay for some reason.. so the actual launch took place at 11:35 I believe. This was the same launch that only had a 30% chance of actually happening because of the rain and cloud cover. It was really bad that day. (remember when we left Disney? Those clouds? Yea, they were still out and about) But somehow, at 11:35, there was an open window and the launch happened.

Awesome! Here are some pics. Which are zoomed in a bit, but not a telephoto zoom or anything. We were really that close.

The sound was cool. The smoke left behind was what was amazing to me. And the speed at which it got from the launch pad through past the clouds. You don't realize that when you watch it on TV, because the camera follows the shuttle, so you lose the perspective. But it was really fast. And totally awesome. So glad the girls got to see it. While they may not appreciate it now, they will know, later in life that they were there to witness it. Very cool.

Here's the video Brad shot. Brenna was on his shoulders and was NOT a happy camper. So I apologize for the constant crying (and screaming...ugh) in the background. She kept saying it was stinky. (roll eyes) Also, for some reason the video perspective, we both agree, made it seem like we were further than what we felt like we were. It seemed much closer in real life than it does in this video. I could SEE the shuttle, not just a speck. So I dunno. Weird. Brad also took video with our regular camcorder so I'm hopeful that one turned out better. This is what you get though, since I can upload our little camera's videos to YouTube. ;)

From there, we hit the road. We wanted to eat at a local place we had heard about there in Titusville, but the wait was over an hour! You think? With 3/4 a million people in town? Ha. So we drove on... very very very slowly. It was way worse getting OUT of town. We ate lunch at a nearby McD's. The bathrooms everywhere we went had a line out the door. There was not seating at McD's. It was crazy. But, again, worth it to get to witness such a monumental event.

We decided to drive up another hour and stay at Daytona Beach. It actually took us close to 2 hrs to get there. Brad wanted a picture of this guy driving around...

When we got to Daytona Beach, I had already been surfing (via phone and iPad) looking for rooms and places to stay. I'm not a hotel snob by any means, but I also refuse to stay in a roach motel. However, it seemed like the options were few and far between in Daytona Beach...at least for hotels near the beach. It was either $200+/night hotels or roach motels. Everything else was booked. And that meant most things were booked. I guess it was still 'traffic' from the shuttle stuff? I don't know. But it was rainy when we got there and driving up and down Daytona Beach looking for a semi-reasonable place to stay that didn't cost an arm and a leg was proving difficult. Finally, we found a place, called Boardwalk Inn and Suites. Sounds a lot fancier than it was. But it was literally RIGHT on the beach. It was decent ok. The floors were dirty (like it was on the beach), but otherwise, it was a pretty ok place to stay (for the price) and we got free breakfast. So we were in! And, after all, it was only one night.

After we got checked in and took our overnight bag in (we packed so everything stayed packed except one bag with all our change of clothes in it for the next couple days, so we didn't have to unload everything at every stop), we headed to the beach. We weren't sure if we would get in the water or not. Brad, particularly wanted to stay somewhere on the East coast, since the girls had been on the West coast just a year ago. But as far as spending time in the water, we weren't sure about that, so we put on swimsuits under our clothes.

Turns out, the water was coooold. Not *quite* as cold as in California, but pretty darn chilly. However, the girls LOVED it. The beaches were clean (not white sandy, but very clean and pretty nonetheless). So we let them 'swim' (aka -play around) in the ocean for a while.

I took a lot of cute pictures, that I could've edited up and made look really good. But, whatever. I don't care. Its the memory I want captured. I'm not going for best photo contest here. And there are sooo many pics from our trip that I just didn't want to dive into that task of going through and editing.

Anyway, finally, I had to make them get out after an hour or so when their lips were turning blue. We played in the sand some more....

And then we walked the 15 ft to our hotel and jumped in the pool. This was the oddest pool I had ever seen! The deep end was 10ft deep+! The shallow end was probably 4ft and even the steps to get in to the pool were over Brenna's head.

But they didnt' care. They enjoyed swimming. Brenna is becoming a good little swimmer, not scared at all of going under water, putting her face in to really swim and using her arms and legs. She likes to jump in and be just as adventurous as Brooke.

After swimming, we went to our room, dried off, put our dry clothes back on and went to find something for dinner. Our hotel had a restaraunt, but we were a little leery. So we decided to find something within walking distance. We ended up at a Pizza Hut, as a nice safe bet. Brooke saw an advertisement somewhere that some shop had free shark tooth necklaces with any purchase, so then she was dead set on getting a shark tooth necklace. We didn't find that store, but another one where we did in fact get a shark tooth necklace (or two ;) and a couple cheap souvenir Tshirts (they have them from Malibu Beach in CA, need one from this side of the coast!).

By then, it was getting late, so we headed back to our room for the night. Next up.... we didn't know yet?!?