Ever since I saw the movie Space Camp, it’s been a desire of mine to see a space shuttle launch, up close and in person. I’m not a space nut or anything, but I do find the whole concept of space travel fascinating. And while I don’t have a technical bucket list, so to say, if I did, seeing a launch in person would most definitely be on that list. Which, is why we switched our vacation plans around last fall and took our family to Florida, to try and see the last launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery and one of the last U.
When a tour company approaches you as you board their boat offering the chance to back out with a full refund, a normal person would heed the warning, take the money and run.
But we aren’t normal. Because we have a quest to visit every national park during our married life together. And this quest brought us all the way down to Key West. And we didn’t drive all the way down to Key West only to turn around and head 100 miles north without first taking a boat 70 nautical miles further west to Dry Tortugas National Park.
Our time at Biscayne National Park was fun, but way too short. We took a 3 hour tour (which thankfully turned out much better than the infamous 3 hr tour). I think the kids favorite part was the 45 minute ride out to Boca Chita Island. They described their ride out their as “the best rollar coaster ride ever!” The wind was really blowing. I thought it felt much like those super sonic hand dryers that look like they are ripping your skin off.
When we arrived at Everglades NP it was shortly before midnight and raining quite hard. Scott got out of the van to attempt to put up the tent, but when he remembered the top of our tent is open screen (which we then put a cover over after set up) he realized it would be futile as the entire inside of the tent would be soaked before we even set it up.
Because we were only planning to do one day in Disney (I hope to take the whole family back later for a longer Disney vacation when all of the the kids are old enough to truly enjoy and appreciate it. This day in Magic Kingdom was just to hold them me over for the next 5 years or so) I didn’t even try to pretend we’d be able to do or see it all in one day.
We chose this year and even this specific week to take our Florida trip because the Space Shuttle Discovery was supposed to make it last launch into space. Both Scott and had always wanted to see a shuttle launch and being as it is one of the last launches ever, we really wanted to take the kids to see this historical event.
The launch was originally planned for Mon Nov 1st.