Cheap is good, Free is better

Just three miles north of us up rte 3 on Merritt Island is Kennedy Space Center, and the amazing KSC Visitors Center. We toured the Visitors Center and KSC for an entire day in 2009 when our family was with us for two weeks at Disney World. It was, like Disney World, wonderful, and expensive.  And in 2009 the Shuttle Atlantis was not on display in its own huge building as it is now. 

But the cost has gone up in the last five years, not down, so we decided to see one of the other space shuttles, like the Discovery at the Smithsonian Air and Space Annex near Dulles Airport, when we go through that woods neck.  And its free, for now.

But one cannot drive by such a place without at least remembering the experience in electronic pixels. Which includes one of the un-flown Redstone rockets that was built to take our very first astronauts into space.  Essentially a three stage German V-Rocket without a weapon.  Thank God the allies won World War TWO.

There is also the Space Explorers Hall of Fame about a mile west on NASA Blvd from the Visitor’s Center.  This, too, is expensive.  And the facts and mementos exhibited inside are not a priority of ours to see so the price dictated that we photo the somewhat downsized model of a Space Shuttle, called the Inspiration, which sits outside this hall.

  

In the FREE  lobby there is a wonderful model of Alan Sheppard, America’s first astronaut to fly into space. Cheap is good, free is always better.

And across from the Space Hall of Fame is a mismatched but interesting American Police Hall of Fame.  Yes, this too is expensive.  But the admissions clerk allowed me to take a couple of shots of the first display room and that included the ROBOCOP movies first plastic suit prop, and the BLADE RUNNER movies futuristic police car. Free IS good!

Then we drove the couple of miles up US 1 to Titusville, Florida, where you can look across the Indian River at the huge NASA Vehicle Assembly Building and Shuttle launch platforms three miles away on Merritt Island, surrounded by the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge.

The Refuge, and its sister National Seashore Park make seriously good security sense for Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.  No buildings and easy to see swamp and marshland everywhere you look. 

 To get to the beach you drive right by the old Shuttle landing site. Except that it is surrounded by alligator and snake infested canals. A NASA helicopter flew south at about 40’ over Playalinda Beach as I took some photos of (or in) a rain squall that came through this afternoon. No ones getting to the Orion launch without a passcard.

 

The refuge itself is beautiful, even though the rain, and Mona says my talking as we walked, scared all the birds and four footeds far away. But this is Central Florida in December.  There are still gorgeous flowers to photograph!

And the rain did not keep us from visiting several libraries.  That’s a no-brainer wet day activity for us!

On the way home we picked up some very freshly picked oranges (the grove is across the street) for dessert tonight. This farm has been here since 1920.  I doubt there were tourists to buy directly from the groves then.

Tomorrow we rise early to drop the coach at Coastal RV in Cocoa to have the battery auto switches (between the 8 house and 2 starter batts) and those pesky leaks looked at. If rain is still predicted, we go south for more libraries and a couple of Goodwill’s.  You just never know where a good book will be hiding next.

And if it stays dry, the beach is MILES long!

-Ken