Going Out of Our Way for Kennedy Space Center

LONG STORY SHORT
Yay, space!

Looking ahead at our schedule last week, Jason and I wondered the same thing: Why do we have three full days in Jacksonville, Fla.?

We still don’t know. Our best guess is that it’s a casualty of the many times Jason reshuffled our schedule to accommodate the Major League Baseball and college football games we want to attend this year. In any case, the question of why we had three days in Jacksonville was a moot point; the real question was, what do we do with them?

Aside from a round of golf for Jason, we couldn’t find much that interested us. (Sorry, Jacksonville.) But outside of Jacksonville?

Well. We couldn’t help noticing that, just two and a half hours away, was Kennedy Space Center.

Two and a half hours may sound like quite a drive, but when you spend an average of five hours on the road every few days, your tolerance soars to absurd levels. Only one other stop on our route, Orlando, would bring us closer to Kennedy—but we’d already set aside that time for something else.

If we wanted to see Kennedy Space Center—and as a former JPLer who misses her old job, I really did—it looked like we wouldn’t have a better chance than during our Jacksonville stay. So we went.

It turned out to be a very long day. Our drive south to Cape Canaveral took an hour longer than expected, thanks to traffic and our chosen route. (We drove along the coast so we could make quick stops at two of Florida’s national monuments along the way, neither of which ended up happening.*) Then, after visiting the center, we had to find some dinner and make the two-and-a-half-hour drive home.

All in all, was it worth it?
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Take a look at the photos below. You tell me.

As a former JPLer, I’ll never say Kennedy Space Center makes for a better visit than Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (JPL is the center of the universe, after all.) But Kennedy does offer visitors a close look at the mind-blowing history and achievements of U.S. space exploration. So yeah. I’d say it was worth the trip.

Besides, it was nice to see an old friend again.

It’s good to see you, Percy.**

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* If you know someone who works for either Castillo de San Marcos National Monument or Fort Mantanzas National Monument, please ask them to consider expanding or redesigning their parking lots.
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** Perseverance (aka Percy) is NASA’s latest Mars rover, built and managed by JPL. It launched from Earth and landed on the Red Planet during my time as a JPLer, so I feel more affectionate toward it than JPL’s previous rover, Curiosity (also pictured above), which landed on Mars in 2012.