Atlantis Launch

Friday, July 8 -- We made it!  We got to see the shuttle launch.  Wow, what an experience.  We got up at 3:00 a.m. to try to get a spot.  We drove up to the Space View Park, which was probably about 20 miles.  We must have gotten there to late to get the free parking because they hit us for $30 to park, but we got to park pretty close.  We walked around the park, checking out the situation.  It was already pretty full, lots of tents and people sleeping on blankets.  We walked over next to a bank and found what we thought was a better spot, so we walked back to the car and got our chairs and stuff.  And settled in.  It was now about 4:30 a.m.

We were under a streetlight, so Joe got his book out and read for a while, and I kept trying to doze off. We could barely see the lights on the launch pad across the river, and once it got light, we could only see the launch pad framework through binoculars.    Time went very slowly, but it didn't rain on us at all.  The crowd kept getting larger, and we moved over to a different spot when people in front of us raised their Easy-Up and blocked our view.  It was cloudy, so we didn't know if the launch was going to happen or not.
Daylight came about 6:00 a.m., still 5 1/2 hours to go. Here's the crowd in daylight, and the view we were watching across the river.  We saw 2 military jets and a NASA helicopter fly over, and a hovercraft (we don't know if this was military or not) kept patrolling the far side of the river.  There were several boats of different sizes out on the river -- they had the best view of all.

 Some people moved in beside us with a portable radio, so we got to hear what was going on from time to time.  Finally, the countdown started.  And stopped.  And continued.  Everyone was on their feet.

There's people everywhere now.  The cops blow a whistle every so often to get people to move off the street, but it seemed otherwise that they were allowing them to park about anywhere there was a hole.  Some of these people had huge cameras with them, and tripods.

And here it goes!!!!

Way cool!  We actually got to see it for several seconds before it disappeared into the clouds.  And the vapor stream hung around for quite a while.

 

We could have used Joe Myer's camera for this day.

We got back to the RV in about an hour, so we thought that was pretty good, considering the traffic.  And we slept all afternoon.  We had McDonald's breakfast sandwiches at 3:30, hamburgers from a park vendor at 9:30, so I'm not sure what meal is next, but I'm up from my nap, it's 5:00 p.m., so I should probably wake up Joe and fix us some dinner.  But what a day this was!