Rocket Park

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all enjoying your summer so far!  I've been a bit MIA as David and I am in Maine visiting Acadia Nation Park, and it feels a little like we have taken a hop back in time haha  We are staying at a quaint little bed and breakfast in a tiny village, which already makes us feel like we're back in colonial times, but we've spent most of our time here with no internet or cell reception!  I know, crazy right?  but it's actually been really nice spending some really quiet time up here. It's the sort of quiet that you can't really find in cities.  We are really enjoying the incredibly slow pace of life here driving around and hiking by ourselves (seriously, it feels like we have the whole mountain to ourselves most of the time).  

We'll be back with a few Acadia updates when we get back next week, but in the meantime, I have a few Houston posts for you guys  =)  Enjoy!

When I visited Houston for David's graduation, I didn't expect to have so many adventures; after all, I did spend 2 years there.  However,  I think when you visit a city as a tourist, you have a totally different mindset than what you have when you live there.  For example, when I lived there, driving an hour away just to visit a park with rockets would have seemed like such a production.  Finding about 3-4 hour chunk would have also been hard because you know,,, endless practicing.  But when you visit as a tourist, all you've got is time!

so we drove many miles away to the NASA rocket park to join a whole bunch of little kids on an educational field trip.

the rocket displayed here is the Saturn 5, and it was actually used to launch humans to the moon!

there were also 2 other ones outside (two in the pictures above), but it was raining on and off so we spent most of our time indoors with the Saturn V and learning about all of the space missions NASA has done.

It may not seem like a fun place to visit unless you are a supernerd like us, but actually, I thought they did a really good job of displaying the different sections of the rocket.

I mean, these things are huge! and all of the different parts and wiring it has is mind-blowing.  

I mean, how did people even come up with these designs/machines/inventions?  How did they even think about sending people to the moon?  It's one of those things that I've always just learned about and have accepted as fact -yeah, we've sent people to the moon-but if you think about it, it's actually crazy!  we've sent people to the moon! actually being there, seeing the machinery that was used, reading about the conditions of the missions...  it was a whole new experience for me.

They also chronicled did a good job of displaying different information about all of the space missions on the side wall.  it had all of the astronauts information, a few quotations from the astronauts, and other details about the missions.  (We personally got a kick out of the evolution of the space suits  haha)

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little, so I may have enjoyed this a little more than someone else (and David's a scientist -and a nerd just like me-) so we may not be the best judge of the excitement this park could provide.. However, I think it's worth a visit especially if you have kids. Even if you don't, I think we could probably all learn something from here that we didn't know before, and seeing the rockets in person is truly an awe-inspiring experience! If you are in the Houston area, I would recommend a visit--it truly was a pretty easy trip out there, and definitely worth it!  =)

Have a wonderful rest of the week and thanks for stopping by!

--Janny