Hail Atlantis

WE HAVE LIFTOFF: Our morning started with another pre-dawn alarm. This time it was 5 a.m. By 5:30, we were on the road to our rendezvous point with our tour bus to the Kennedy Space Center.

We were on the bus by 6:30 or so, and had to wait and wait (the theme for the day) and then wait some more. We arrived at the Kennedy Space Center about 8 a.m. where we waited in a long line to get in. We perused the place for a ridiculously short 1.25 hours.

We did get to see some stuff, of course, including a retired shuttle up-close-and-personal, and some old school Gemini modules. We also made our way through the uber cool Rocket Garden.
> Too soon, it was time to get in line for the bus out to the Causeway, our launch viewpoint. That was a mega wait - first in a line about a mile long (no lie) and then once we got on the bus, we had to wait for all the lame people who can't follow directions to finally make their way to the bus.

Oh, and speaking of people who can't follow directions, our bus driver got LOST on the way to the Causeway. Now let me ask you this - if you were driving a chartered bus full of people who had paid dearly and traveled from round the world (there were Aussies and Europeans on our bus), do you think you might break out a map to make sure you knew where you were going? Well sure you would - but our driver didn't. Sigh.
The good news is, that because the driver was so flipping lost, she took us where she wasn't supposed to, including very close to the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building, where the space shuttle is stood up on end and attached to its rockets. Cool!

Eventually we arrived at the Causeway about three hours before launch time. We set up camp and the Big Wait was on. The first 2.5 hours dragged by (although one welcome diversion was a dolphin that swam up to near our campsite and played around in the water in front of us for awhile). We were able to hear updates from the NASA audio feed and knew that things were progressing smoothly. We had no reason to think the launch would be scrubbed.

Finally, at about 2:10, a built in hold in the countdown was completed and the 9-minute countdown began. The crowd started buzzing electric! The last five minutes seemed to fly by in a couple of heartbeats. The crowd chanted down the last 10 seconds and then magic happened.

It's impossible to describe the sight of a shuttle launching. The initial billowing clouds reminded me of Mt. St. Helens blowing her top. These clouds didn't float - they were forced, just like a volcanic explosion. Soon, the rocket fire began burning and it was every bit as bright as the sun. I can't IMAGINE sitting in a vehicle riding that explosion. Those astronauts are 99.9 brave and .1 percent downright crazy.

It's low resolution and NASA.gov has better footage, but here's what we saw ...

The happy family smiling in the aftermath as the exhaust trail began to dissipate.
After another Huge Really Bad Long Wait on a 90 degree bus in bumper to bumper traffic for two plus hours, we headed back to our Cocoa Beach motel and within 5 minutes were out the door to frolic in the Atlantic.

I have soooo many more photos, this is just the tip of the iceberg.