Day three of our trip was spent in the Houston TX area at Johnson Space Center, then on out of the state with an overnight stop in Louisiana.
We had spent the night at a small campground only a few minutes from the Johnson Space Center. The night was a bit wet with showers, and the morning and afternoon somewhat overcast, but not too bad a day. When we woke up in the morning we were greeted by some unusual looking birds. I have since been told that they are guinea hens (I have probably misspelled that). In addition there were some ducks mixed into the flock.
It is nice seeing palm trees again too.
We finally got going and arrived at JSC (Johnson Space Center) and took in quite a bit. They have a real nice setup there and we were able to visit a lot of the displays. Since it was over a Holiday period most of the area was shut down which meant that although we were not able to see things going on like a normal work day we were able to see some areas that normally we would not be able to.
This is one of 3 remaining Saturn 5 Rockets from the Apollo program. They used this type rocket to propel the Apollo capsule and LEM assembly (Lunar Excursion Module) to the moon and back. It was just enormous and you can only get a picture of the whole thing from a distance like this. The actual portion that made it to the moon and back comprised only a small portion of the whole unit. We were able to get off the tram tour at this point and take a close up look at the various rockets displayed.
They also had various mock-ups of the vehicles that you could check out. Included were these:
The interior of a LEM
This Space Shuttle Cabin
Space Station Modules
After leaving JSC we headed down to the Gulf Coast and took a short ferry ride from the island to the next one where we could continue up the coast. This is a photo of one of the other ferry's that we passed on the way over.
