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Kennedy Space Center |
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We left the motel early Monday morning to visit the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is on the same island as the Kennedy Space Center. The highway through the Center is closed so we had to backtrack There is a good visitor center for the refuge, and we took a one-hour drive along The Black Point Wildlife Drive, on dykes originally constructed to maintain water levels to control mosquitoes. Until the 1950s there were natural salt marshes, occasionally flooded by brackish water. Salt marsh mosquitoes bred there and, when NASA acquired the site and the nearby cities developed, a mosquito control program was instituted consisting of impounding water behind a network of dykes during the mosquito breeding season. This changed the environment and some areas are now being restored to salt marshes. There were lots of water birds, including pelicans, gulls, several sorts of ducks, ospreys nesting on top of poles, Louisiana and white herons and, later in the Space Center, several alligators. We also went to the Manatee Observation Deck on Hanover Canal and we lucky enough to see two. | |
| We then visited Kennedy Space Center. Entry was
slow, but not because of security, just bureaucracy. We took the trip around the
site, which is on several peninsulas with lagoons in between.
First we went to an Observation platform with parked crawler transporters parked alongside. This was as close as we could get to a shuttle on the launch pad 39A (?), ready for a launch scheduled for February 28. We could just see the top of the orange fuel tank. |
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Then we went past the Vehicle Assembly Building to the Apollo/Saturn V center, with good films and a horizontal Saturn with all the stages. | |
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Finally, back at the visitor center, we went into a demo shuttle cargo bay. The whole visit was fascinating. |
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We left half way through the afternoon for a 5-hour drive to Florida City. We initially made up some time on the schedule, but then near Palm Beach I 95 became plugged. We had resisted spending money on tolls, but after suffering for 10 minutes and with the prospect of this extending to past Miami, we exited and struggled west to pick up the Florida Turnpike (75 cents every 10 miles). This ran fine until near Miami airport a narrowed section under construction delayed us for 30 minutes. The tollgates had green lanes for cars with correct change, yellow for a ‘SpeedPass’, and blue for trucks and cars without change. In the dusk it was very difficult to see the color of the signs over the gates, which were poorly lit. At one, I had the correct change, and went into a green lane only to find the tollgate closed with a red light, At the last minute I chopped right into the next lane, which had a green light, but turned out to be a yellow lane. By then I was in lane delineators, and slowed to try to get into a blue lane, but was met with a blast of horn from behind, so just ran the tollgate. The passes must be just paper and not electronic because we got away with it (so far). Got to the motel at about 7.30, which was very late for us! Had fish for dinner.
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