Breakfast & Launch

Made it to just outside Orlando on Sunday afternoon and settled into the Merry D Campground for the night. Very quiet campground with very strong religious overtones. We passed on the Sunday night prayer session since we had to get up so early the next morning. We were at Camping World Monday morning to get our awning fixed and rather than just hang around there (and since we had the dogs and the cat with us), we took a drive to an urban park in downtown Orlando. Lake Eola Park was very nice, allowed dogs on a leash, and had many feathered types of wildlife including black swans, which we never knew existed. The total acreage of the park, established in 1888, is approximately 43 acres of which 23 acres is water.

Afterwards we headed back towards Camping World, stopping for gas at the Hess station in Disney World. It's hard to believe that the gas on Disney World property is cheaper than off! We wonder if we can count this "short visit" as one of our trips! :-) From there it was about an hour and a half to Titusville, and we settled into the local KOA around 2pm for a 2 week stay.

They were just finishing up some new super pad sites, and we were directed to an end site with large oaks providing shade in the afternoon and still allowing for satellite reception. On Tuesday we noticed that we had been overcharged by $5 per night for the stay, so we walked up to the office to inquire about the discrepancy. We were told that this was the price for the new sites (which we had not requested), and they did not seem very willing to adjust the rate. They suggested that if we wanted a cheaper rate that we would have to move to a different site. Now moving the RV after you've already set up is a real pain and something we were not interested in doing. It is in these types of situations that Russ is at his best and explained that we had no intention of moving unless it was to the RV park next door that we had visited earlier in the morning. Russ suggested that the appropriate thing to do was to credit us the $5 a night for 14 nights, and we would stay here. That seemed to get their attention, and we received the credit.

That evening Russ was standing outside when one of the neighbors stopped by to chat, and we found out that there was actually a rocket launch scheduled for today. Our new neighbor told us where he and his wife would be watching it from, and we went onto the NASA website to confirm the launch time. This launch was a Delta II Expandable Medium-Launch Vehicle carrying a Navstar GPS Satellite. McDonnell Douglas was awarded a contract for construction of 18 Delta IIs and the first Delta II launching a GPS satellite happened on Feb. 14, 1989. GPS provides real time accuracy and permits land, sea, and airborne users to determine three-dimensional position, velocity, and time 24 hours a day in all weather anywhere in the world. It is also, when equipped on a golf cart, excellent in determining your golf ball's distance to the pin. This particular satellite will orbit the earth at 12,300 miles using solar power and has a life expectancy of 11 years.

So off we were at 7am to catch the 8:23am launch! As it turned out, there was no need to get there quite so early as these types of launches are old news to the locals. We did enjoy talking to a local gentleman, who we now believe is Robert "Ozzie" Osband, who in the late 90s, when the area was splitting into a second area code, recommended to the Commission the area code of 321. How appropriate! He even has the cell phone number 321-LIFTOFF! A fun person to talk to and extremely informative about all launch and landing activities at the Kennedy Space Center. As an added bonus he and two others from his group had radios with a direct link to the morning's launch control room. We actually got to listen to the countdown over these radios knowing exactly when to expect liftoff. We also received a certificate from him titled "United Launch Alliance Delta II Launch Witness". To the best of our knowledge it was not a Hollywood production! You can visit his website at http://www.spacelaunchinfo.com/ .

The launch was spectacular to see, and we were amazed at the roar of the engines as it reached us at about +10 seconds after liftoff. We were able to follow its path for about 2 minutes until it disappeared into the rising sun. When we headed down this way, we didn't expect to see this launch and it is only added to our an anticipation in seeing the much bigger bird fly next week.