The Hare Reporting from the American Southeast

Hi Again,

Apparently I'm only good for blogging when I'm on tour. This being my first blog since the fabulous Vietnam adventure.

So, GBSFB is now in Charlton, oops, I mean Charleston South Carolina. And here's how I got here...

This story begins on July 13th, the scheduled launch day for the STS-114 space shuttle "Return-To-Flight" launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. By spectacular good fortune (sorry Eileen and crew) the launch was scrubbed about 90 minutes before blast off. This meant that the earliest they could reschedule for Saturday July 15th. My luck held, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with the fuel-low sensor so July 15th passed without copious quantities of solid rocket fuel being expended.... which leads to the start of my tourism...

Left the fabulous City of Sin on Saturday July 15th, after passing through Salt Lake CIty, Utah and Chicago, Illinois (it was a long flight, all on one plane), I landed in Orlando, Florida, 5 after midnight on Sun 16th. Stayed in Orlando for the night and spent some of Monday wondering about Disney World before heading south to West Palm Beach. I never did find the town of Celebration, which is what I was originally looking for.

Spent the next day (I suppose it was Monday, but who cares when you're on vacation?!) hanging out in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. A lot of time spent in the pool, because the humidity was outrageous!

Tuesday we took off south to Miami. A swim in the Atlantic Ocean (warm, of course) and lunch in South Beach (in a 20/30's style hotel/cafe owned by Gloria Estefan). The a quick zip through little Havana (actually, you could have called the beach little Havana!), and then back for a fancy shmancy dinner in Palm Beach. (Virgil, you should add Worth St Palm Beach to your list of must-see shopping streets).

On Wednesday we relinquished our free accommodation and headed north for the tour proper. First stop Kennedy Space Center! OK, so the tour didn't get very far on this day... coz we stopped at the NASA center and hung out there all day! :-D Went on the tour out to the shuttle launch viewing station. Saw the actual Discovery sitting on launch pad 39B waiting for the return-to-flight launch. Saw the awesome 'crawler' they use to move the fully assembled shuttle out to the launch pad. Went out to the Saturn V/Apollo center and watched documentary (tourist) footage of development of space flight to the point of the moon landing. The went and walked around one of the real Apollo rockets. WOW, I want to be a rocket scientist when I grow up! Oh yeah, I'm going to be, I almost forgot. :-) So, then we came back past the tortoise and the alligators (I kid you not, they were just hanging out... it's a wildlife sanctuary, when it's not a blazing inferno of rocket fuel and vaporized steam) and proceeded to take a walking tour of a space shuttle (Explorer), the SRB (solid rocket booster) and other blast-off rockets (way big, way cool, I touched the big orange tank). Then round the "Rocket Garden" with samples of all the astronaut capsules (small!) and rockets and engines through different stages of development (big!). It doesn't really matter if I don't get to see this launch in person... I saw it on the launch pad, and the space enter is GREAT!

So, by the end of Wednesday we'd made it to St Augustine, Florida. This is the oldest european settlement in America. Settled in about 1513, by the Spanish explorers.

Thursday we drove north again into Georgia to Savannah. Downtown Savannah is a great, historic township. It has an ancient cemmetary/park in the city center. I love to look at old gravestones. And right next door was a beautifully restored cathedral. It was magnificent. We even found a half-decent cafe in town (Ambrosia).

So finally we headed north and east again to Charleston, South Carolina. We stopped briefly at an old Plantation homestead (Frampton House). This was a beautiful old building with a truly oddball collection of confederate memorabilia, Americana and tourist information. The had a "Joggle Board" outside, which seems to have been and inexpensive form of entertainment for young and old alike. A precursor to the modern trampoline maybe.

Having run around Charleston this morning going ooh and ahh at more historic buildings, I'm about ready to head inland and north to Charlotte, North Carolina. Gota go, more tourism awaits. :-)

Catch ya back here soon
Hugs
GBFSB