Journeying Geographer: Day 64: Spaced Out

Today's tour was a departure from our travels in the South. We visited the Houston Space Center and took a tram tour of the neighboring NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). The JSC campus is over 1600 acres (nearly three square miles), and is designed to feel like a college campus. There were three stops on the 90 minute tram tour. The first was the Historic Mission Control, used from the moon missions of the 1960s up through 1992. We sat in the gallery where families of the astronauts would gather to keep updated on the missions. Stop two was my favorite, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. In this cavernous building are full-scale versions of the International Space Station and other vehicles for the astronauts to use in preparation for their missions. Currently, the U.S. has six astronauts aboard the space station (and the newer mission control is in constant use monitoring their activities). The third and final stop was at Rocket Park, where we viewed actual rockets used in early missions. The highlight was seeing the Saturn V rocket used to propel astronauts to the moon.

After nearly four hours of "spacing out," we left, but first stopped at a CVS Pharmacy to stock up on cold meds, since we have nearly exhausted our supply. We then headed north to our hotel near Bush Intercontinental Airport (my wife and daughter fly home to Oregon in the morning). We only had to travel from the southern suburbs of Houston to the northern, but that meant driving 48 miles of congested freeways (during rush hour of course, since that's the only way to fully experience a major city). I enjoyed one final dinner with my family at a nearby Waffle House (they have the best hash browns -- I had mine smothered, covered, and chunked). After seeing off my girls in the morning, I plan to drive west to my aunt's house near San Antonio, where I will meet up with my dad, who flew out from Oregon a couple of days ago and is joining me on the final leg of my journey.