Last Day In Florida

Yes, today is our last day in Florida. These two weeks have felt like a vacation, but I think once we start moving it will feel more like a journey, or travel. Tonight will be our last night here at the Great Outdoors, so we are taking Pat and Jim out for dinner to say thanks for all they've done for us. They've really helped us find our feet here, and I'm sure the whole trip is going to be a lot easier for us now we've had a practice run here.

Tomorrow we head up to Georgia, where it will be colder. We are going to drive the 3.5 hour drive from Titusville here, to Okefenokee, just across the Georgia/Florida border, but we are going to take all day doing the drive, stopping at various places along the way. Okenfenokee is a swamp area. We will be spending two nights there so that we can explore the swamp a bit, before taking another 3.5 hour drive up to Jackson, where I will be visiting with my friend who is on death row. Some of you will remember me posting a few weeks back about the trouble we had getting police clearance forms in time to visit the prison. Well, we got all that sorted and sent off before we left for America. But 2 days ago the forms still hadn't arrived and the prison were unable to clear us for visiting. Yesterday however, I received a call to say that the forms had arrived (posted on 28th Jan, arrived 11th Feb - and I paid extra to guarantee their arrival in 5 days or less, tut tut.) So I am so pleased that we should be able to visit E on Saturday. I'd have felt so bad for him if the forms had got lost in the post, as he is really looking forward to meeting us. I'm a tad nervous about visiting America's death row, but its certainly an experience not many people get to have.

Anyway, today we are off to the Kennedy Space Centre, for the second time. We went yesterday with the free two day passes someone gave us. At the moment its 8.30am, and Im typing this in bed because everyone else is still sleeping. It's a rare thing indeed for me to be the first one up, but it seems to be happening more and more here.

Yesterday we had a great day at the Kennedy Space Centre. There was a fabulous space park for Barney to play in, and he could have spent the entire day there. The kids and I went on a shuttle simulator, which basically simulates a rocket blasting off into space. We sat strapped into seats as the rocket faced up to the sky, so we were lying backward in out seats, then it started shaking violently, and making a hell of a racket. Theres a lot of shaking, a lot of moving about, and then suddenly the top of the rocket opens, and we are in space. At this moment, the shaking stops, and they manage to create the weird sensation of weightlessness. It's very clever, we all actually felt as if we were floating.

We took the coach tour out to the launch pads, and various other places. But we plan to go back today to see all the things we missed. Dan really enjoyed it I think. He's a typical bloke, loves all the big bits of machinery, and sheer scale of the large rockets. Here are some of my fave pics from the day. You can see the rest of them in Florida Album 3.
(The last image of the hands is Dan and the kids touching a real piece of the moon).