Titusville

We spent last week at Manatee Hammock Campground in Titusville. It’s on what’s known as the ‘Space Coast’ since it’s right across the water from Merritt Island/Cape Canaveral. Matt had work here for a few days. We booked the campground a few nights and then ended up staying longer since plans kept changing.

We did school most of the day Monday and discovered a rec center at the campground that had puzzles sitting out, so we did a lot of puzzling this week. Claire and Reece are both getting pretty good – Grandma McKinley would be proud!

On Tuesday, the kids and I went out to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (the visitor center and the beach were closed), but we went to Haulover Canal (built to haul large space parts/equipment over to the Kennedy Space Center/Cape Canaveral) and saw manatees swimming in the canal. We also saw some dolphins go by. And Reece spotted an alligator in the ditch!

Then we went for a short hike at Scrub Ridge Trail. We started on the short hike, but soon encountered some water-logged areas. We went through them carefully and didn’t get too wet until the third or fourth area. We kept thinking about turning back, but figured we’d have to get back through those areas, so we might as well continue on. Well, we made it to the halfway point and started back only to find that the ENTIRE trail was about 3-4 inches of standing water for the great majority of the walk back (it was clear, but brownish and not pleasant). Luckily we didn’t see any snakes or alligators and rinsed off when we got back to the car. The hike has now gone down as the worst hike – worse than the Sleeping Bear Point hike where we got pounded by blowing sand the entire time.

The next day we got to see a rocket launch! – from the fishing pier at our campground! It was a really neat experience. There was even a guy there watching it with us who does work on the landing pads. So cool.

Reece watching the rocket launch. We didn’t hear the rocket until it got about this high.

That evening we carved pumpkins and our friends in Colorado Springs, Tim and Mel, joined up via video! It’s an annual tradition that we were able to keep up via technology.

On Thursday we all spent the day at Kennedy Space Center. So impressive and informative! Also, the progression of space travel was neat to see – from the Saturn rocket (with the Apollo program) to the shuttles that built the International Space Station (shuttle Atlantis is displayed at the space center). And now to Project Artemis which is going to build a space station to orbit/be on the moon.