Houston Mission Control Space Center, June 24-25, 2018

Sunday

An all black lighthouse on Bolivar Peninsula

Leaving Bolivar Peninsula on the Gulf, we had to take a ferry over to Galveston Island.  The backup was 1 1/2 miles, so it took over an hour to catch one of the four ferries that were running continuously.

Galveston appeared to be an upscale beautiful island with some neat old Victorian homes and a few historical mansions - someplace I would like to come back and explore.

Crossing the bridge to the mainland was all oil refineries as far as we could see.  We continued on north up the mainland to the Houston Space Center, home of Mission Control.  We spent the rest of the afternoon viewing the exhibits about the International Space Center and sat in on an excellent presentation of what life is like on the Space Center, including hygiene, eating, and sleeping.   We took a tram tour to the Historic Mission Control for the Gemini and Apollo missions.  It was smaller than we expected, but listening to the woman talk about the history made in this room made us extra proud to be Americans.  We saw the speaker that broadcast those words, "One Small Leap for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind" and "Houston, We Have a Problem."

The gallery seating was primarily reserved for families of astronauts - Press was by invitation only.

The little speaker on the right was used in all communications between astronauts and Mission Control

Sleeping bag to keep folks from floating around during sleep.  They have to exercise 2 hours a day to avoid getting osteoporosis

Suction bathroom, with urine being recycled into drinking water

Display how a candle flame differs on Earth vs. space

Crew Member quarters

Food - yuk

Our campground was 20 minutes south where we spent another hot, humid night with the AC running.

Monday
After doing some errands, we headed back to the Space Center to view the remainder of the exhibits, and watch a couple of movies.  We saw Moon Rocks, walked through the 747 used to transport the Shuttles, and watched an excellent movie about the folks in Mission Control and their support groups that are behind the scenes.

Mars Rock

Mars rock

Hummingbird Drone

3D Printed Tools the Astronauts can produce in the Space Station

Jetpack ala The Jetsons could only stay aloft 30 seconds

Airlock on the Space Station

Checklists and Paperwork are overwhelming

Modified 747's accomplishments

Yup, she is from Elmira and Jack approved her student loans.  

Tiles protecting the shuttle from the 3,000 F degree temps on re-entry

Struts added to 747 to support the shuttle

Big Moon Rocks

The shuttle is a reconstruction, but this is the real 747.

Overall, an excellent museum. especially to motivate kids to pursue STEM and the real-world things they can achieve with strong skills.

Staying the night just east of Houston, Texas.  In case you were wondering, the weather here is hot and humid, chance of showers, hot and humid, chance of showers, hot and humid, chance of showers.........

Viking Land, Northern Newfoundland

We enjoyed a beautiful ocean sunset at our campsite in Port au Choix.  Woke to a glorious morning and we did some tidepool exploring.

Neat fossil in the rock

Mussels and barnacles

Rock Art

Whoa, what was this fossil?

We continued north along the coast and took some photos of a few things we have noticed all over this area of Newfoundland.  These roadside gardens, far from any towns are spread along the road.  These are peat bog gardens that the original road builders in the 1960's found and locals decided to use them to build family gardens, even though they have to drive 10-50 miles to get to it!



Some other roadside photos --

Another thing we have mentioned before is the massive amount of woodstacks people have, but here we saw humongous stacks along the road.  Jack found out that the folks here are given an annual 10 year cord allowance to cut wood.  They go into the woods, chop their trees and haul them out to the roadside where they season for the year and then will bring the wood to their property to use the following year.  The multiple stacks are all on "your honor" basis and everyone respects each other's wood stacks.

Next stop - Flower's Cove where we walked out to view the Thrombolites.  These are fossils of the earliest known life forms in the world and only found here and Australia.  They were a unicellular, but together formed large colonies in that look like rock pillows.

We continued north and then east across the northern peninsula to the northeastern tip of Newfoundland.  The Vikings from Greenland "discovered" the area 1,000 years ago and called it Vinland and Leif Eriksson's expeditions throughout the area went as far south as New Brunswick looking for timber and iron for their ships.  The settlement here is L'Anse aux Meadows (Land of Meadows) and lasted about 10 years before they decided to withdraw due to expenses.  They burned the entire settlement and importantly, would not trade iron weapons with the aboriginal peoples here, which probably led to poor relations between the peoples.  The archaelogists discovered the site that locals thought was an old Indian encampment  in 1960 - and it is the only recognized authentic Viking site in North America.

Leif Eriksson

We celebrated my birthday at an excellent local restaurant, looking out across the bay at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland.  We stayed at a nearby campground and yesterday, we drove into St. Anthony's to see the lighthouse and enjoyed seeing two small icebergs in the distance (getting late in the year) and a school of dolphins.

Everyone needs a viking boat in their front yard!

Viking Sod Hut replica used for a Touristy Dinner Theater

Town of St. Anthony

We backtracked south along the western coast to St. Barbe to catch the last ferry to Labrador - a ninety minute sail across the strait in high winds and some medium waves that made it difficult to walk around the ship without holding on.  The ferry actually landed in Quebec province, just a couple of kilometers from Labrador.  We drove straight to our campground a few miles from the ferry terminal.

Our ferry to Labrador

Tractor trailer with a huge John Deere backhoe being unloaded

Ferry lands in Quebec Province

A few kilometers later, we are in Labrador