Yeah!! We are in Florida. After being on the road for two days and spending the night in a Walmart parking lot in Lake City FL, we are in our first Florida park and the temperature was 82 degrees at 11:30 in the morning--finally! I don't know why we are so excited to get to Florida, but we are. Now, for our first alligator sighting!
We got the little Journey all re-decorated for Christmas and decided we would go out and buy us a Christmas tree. But, Terry said we had to donate it to the park after Christmas because we have no room to store it!
I had been busy making beaded ornaments. We met up with the people, Lance & Andrea and Dave & Pat, who we got to know in North Carolina, and with another couple, Bob & Linda. At one of our domino playing evenings, I gave each of them a Christmas card with a beaded ornament attached. These were left over to put on our tree.
We got a little 18" tree (that I am sure I can find room to store after Christmas.) It just fit on our dash and was handy for Santa to sneak gifts under.
We spent Christmas Eve with Bob & Linda and Lance & Andrea. It was actually a little cool--as you can tell by Lance and his "blankie." We had a nice time and lots of good food. Thanks to them for having us--it helped to not miss our family so much.
Well, it looks like we made a haul! We had put each of the kids' family picture on a blanket for them as a gift. I sneaked and put the pic of Terry and Mel Tillis on one for Terry. It ended up being a picture "bigger than life," but he seemed tickled with it. Thanks to everyone for their cards and gifts.
We had to show off the beautiful Christmas weather we had as we ate Christmas dinner outside in Florida!
Later, on Christmas day, we saw a plane writing a message in the sky. We couldn't figure out why he was writing it backwards. We thought he was writing a message as a proposal or something.
When he finished, the message said "I LOVE U BABY JESUS." Then we understood why it was upside down--so it could be read from Heaven!
The Orlando RV Park is on a large lake, but it is at the far side of the park. There are over 850 sites in this park--the largest one we have stayed in. We rode our bikes to the lake several times, looking for alligators! At night, you can see the Disney World fireworks from here. They start going off at different times on different nights, from about 8:00 to 10:00. We never came down to see them, but we could sure hear them each night.
This sign made us hopeful that we would see an alligator, but we never did. They had row boats that were for members use, but I couldn't talk Terry into taking one out to hunt for alligators. I think he was afraid I would get excited if we saw one and tip the boat over!
It looks like alligator country, don't you think? We hadn't been in Florida too long and we saw this "mossy stuff" hanging on a lot of the trees.
When you get up close, it is sort of a vine that grows on the trees. It seems to grow on all of them, no matter what kind. We are going to have to ask someone about it.
The Orlando Temple is only about 40 miles from our park, so we went there one day. It is a beautiful temple.
We drove through a community with this unique water tower.
One morning we heard the "whoosh--whoosh" noise of hot air balloons. Sure enough, we saw five go over the park. I definitely want to go on a ride on one someday. I doubt that I can get Terry to go with me, but I will just have to go without him.
These sand cranes are all over the park. Sometimes they will even come eat out of your hand. I couldn't coax one too close. He probably knew I didn't have anything for him to eat.
We saw this vulture sitting in a dead tree, looking for food. Another day when we were at Bob & Linda's (they backed up to the trees and lake), we saw a little bobcat stalking a squirrel. Of course, I didn't have my camera that day.
There are lots of these little "cages" all over the park. They protect turtle nests.
We saw several of these turtles. We were told that there was one in the park that was about three times as big as this one. They live right in the middle of all of the RV sites and just roam around when there is a warm day.
The Kennedy Space Center is on the coastal side of Orlando, on Merritt Island, and about 60 miles from our park. We decided to spend the $100 ($50) each to go see it. On line, because the Center is 50 years old this year, they were offering a family pass of 4 tickets for $100. So, I bought the four tickets and took the two extra ones up to the people standing in line to buy tickets at the Center. They were very glad to buy my two $25 tickets--a savings for all of us!
The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the United States launch site that has been used for every NASA human space flight since 1968. Although such flights are currently on hiatus, it continues to manage and operate unmanned rocket launch facilities for the US government's civilian space program from three pads at the adjoining Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We went on a bus tour and then came back and went through some of the exhibits and watched some programs. We watched a 3-D movie of real-time astronauts in flight. It was awesome! I rode on a flight simulation ride that was really cool--Terry pooped out on that one. It was great!
On the tour we saw the Vehicle Assembly Building. It is the fourth-largest structure in the world by volume. It is where all of the rockets, missiles and shuttles are built. We went around it and got to see through an open door, where they were working on a transporter that carries the shuttles and missiles out to the towers.
This is one of the three launcher platforms. We drove up close to it--it is huge!
This is just a "picture of a picture" of a shuttle with its missiles, being transported out to one of the launch platforms. The transporter goes 1 mph, so it takes 9 hours for it to reach the one 9 miles away.
This is the road the transporters travel. It is as wide as an 8-lane highway. You can see the open door in the Vehicle Assembly Building in the background, where they are working on one of the transporters.
In one of the buildings there was a small model of one of the shuttles all set up on the launching platform.
There is a special exhibit on the tour that is dedicated to the moon landings, starting in 1968.
President John F. Kennedy was a strong advocate of putting man on the moon.
The picture is kind of dark--they wouldn't let us use flash photography. This control center is the actual one used when man landed on the moon. They showed a movie of the live coverage of the blast-off, the moon landing, splashdown and recovery.
This is the actual Apollo 13 module that didn't make it to the moon, but made it back safely to earth. They call it the "successful failure."
There was a life-size model of a rocket displayed. It was huge! The whole thing is filled with fuel, except just the tip where the astronauts sit, which breaks away from the big part when the fuel is all burnt.
There were displays of several space suits--including the ones they had used in walking on the moon.
I think this is the lunar landing machine.
I am actually touching a rock from the moon! What a day!
Before we left the Orlando RV Park, I told Terry I wanted to go u-pick some oranges. So, one of the last days, we did. The orchard had a little pond and had this sign for a joke!
RIGHT! We got to see our first alligator in the wild! He looks pretty ferocious. But, I guess alligators are usually more afraid of you than you are of them. What you don't want to get too close to is a crocodile!
We did find some oranges--a little high in the tree. They had been pretty picked over.
But, we did get our sack full--with the help of the trusty orange-picker! They didn't taste as good as I thought they would. Arizona oranges are much tastier than Florida oranges. We were told that most Florida oranges are juice oranges.
Well, another great year has passed. We stayed up until midnight, had our "toast," and then called each of the kids and wished them a happy new year--Florida time! Happy New Year to everyone!!!
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