And the Month with my Dad Sadly Draws to a Close.

Well, we had a great month with my dad, trying to pack in as many activities as we could before he went back to the West.  However, we were able to pack a couple more activities before he left.

Visit to the Jacksonville Zoo

The Jacksonville Zoo is 100 years old, but it has certainly changed from when George went there as a little boy.  It is one of my personal favorites to go to, and I just knew my dad would love it, too!  You first must begin by riding the train around the entire zoo.  I got a wheelchair, again, for my dad because of the distance, and also for a place for him to sit down.

The giraffe look-out is where you can get face-to-face with those lovely, but smelly creatures!

The Range of the Jaguar was a gift to the zoo from Wayne and Dolores Weaver, who brought the Jacksonville Jaguars Football Team to Jax.  So why not have some of the real animals?  There are more jaguars in this zoo than any other in the U.S.  They built this whole area like an ancient Mayan village.

The coats on these jaguars are just amazing, plus I didn't realize a jaguar could be black with the same spots, but obviously you can't see them as well.  They only put out two on display a day and the black one wasn't out, but I have seen it many times before.

This fountain always starts as a place to cool your feet when our grand kids come, but soon they are getting far more than their feet wet!

The Japanese gardens with their beautiful pool and the koi fish is not to be missed!

And this big guy is a Komodo dragon.  He/she is about 7 1/2 feet long!

 But, the area I was most excited to visit was The Land of the Tiger, which is brand new in the zoo.  When I took Cassie a few years ago, she seemed to be having a great time, but at the end of the day asked, "But where were the tigers?"  She, being an avid LSU Tiger fan would notice that.  I guess I never did.  Sorry!  Anyway, I have been hoping for a long time that this would happen, and it finally did.  So, I had to call and tell Cassie she had to come, when a little voice piped up, "Grandma, can I come, too?"  It was Riley.  He wants to see the tigers, too!

And believe me, they did it up right!  It covers 2 1/2 acres and includes trails (as you can see from the wire area in the back as well as the wired area in between all the tree branches in the above picture) where the tigers can roam all over the area as well as over your head.  It will give them freedom that they won't experience in any other zoo enclosure anywhere.  Plus, it allows people to get up close and personal with the furry felines.

The zoo's executive director said the facility hasn't had its own tigers in more than 20 years. He said they've been the most requested animal in the four and a half years he's been with the zoo, so Cassie certainly wasn't alone on her request!

Once you get up close yourself, you can see why they are such a wonderful addition to the zoo.  The zoo now has a pair of rare and endangered Sumatran tigers and three endangered Malayan tigers, which were transferred from the Palm Beach Zoo.

These tigers can weigh up to 400 pounds!

I loved how the tigers really brought a smile to my dad's face.

We, also, visited the penguin encounter.

They are such cute little guys, aren't they?!

By this time, it was starting to rain, not just a little but a whole lot.  We found a little protection under the gorilla overhang and maybe that's why this big guy came over so close, too--in order to get out of the rain a little.

Whatever the reason--it was great that he came over so close so we could get a better look at him.  (Perhaps it is a her?  Don't know.)

Finally, the rain was coming down so hard, Dad and I were completely drenched just like we had jumped into a lake, so I took off with him in the wheelchair and ran as fast as I could push to the gator area.  I knew it had a huge viewing area that we could keep dry under.  Actually, we were so doused now, what good was it?

I told my dad there were at least 50 gators in this water, probably, but we only saw one whose nose was above water, plus one way back on the bank.  These are actually little growing plants, not just algae or moss, but they make it hard to see the gators when they are underneath them. 

And we just happened to see a banana spider--I actually have one on my house right now.  These spiders are so useful in helping keep the insect populations down, they are non-poisonous, and I learned that those webs are being tests because they have found that their strength actually surpasses a fiber used in bulletproof vests!

By now, it wasn't raining so hard but still just sprinkling.  Before we left, I just had to take my dad into the bird aviary.  I was so glad we did.  Because not many people were in there, I have never seen the birds come out so close to humans!  Usually they keep their distance a little!

We loved it!  In fact, we loved the entire day--even though you notice I didn't take any more pictures of me--I definitely looked like a "Swamp Thing" after all that rain!

A Day at the Kennedy Space Center

The last activity my dad requested that we do is go to the Kennedy Space Center, so that's what we did on Labor Day.

Kennedy Space Center is named after President John F. Kennedy, who famously declared in 1961 that the U.S. would put an astronaut on the moon and bring that person safely back to Earth, before the end of the decade.

The launch site.  This isn't actually a rocket there now--but a lightning rod since Florida is the lightning capital of the world!

The space agency is grooming private American firms to take astronauts to and from Earth orbit, and it hopes at least two commercial vehicles will be ready to go by 2017.

These are the paths the crawler transporter goes on with the upright rocket aboard which takes it from where the rocket is built and serviced to the launch site.  The transport goes at an amazing speed of one mile per hour!

 NASA began in 1958 and three years later, the space agency began gearing up to put a man on the moon, directed by the goals of President Kennedy outlined in a speech to Congress on May 25, 1961.  However, in oreder to do this, the biggest rocket ever to be built-- the 363-foot-tall Saturn 5, would need to have a building tall enough to house it.

Therefore, construction began on the Vehicle Assembly Building which is 525 feet tall by 716 feet long by 518 feet wide.  It remains one of the largest buildings in the world.  I know it doesn't look that large from here, but those stripes on the flag are each 6 foot wide, to give you an idea of how large it is!

The Apollo/Saturn V Center was absolutely fascinating!  This building shows the entire Saturn V space ship and each of its stages.  Here is Stage 1.

So interesting to see the size of this compared to other items we are familiar with:  Nine tour buses, two space shuttles, two and a half Statue of Liberties, four Mercury shuttles, and one football field.

This was showing how big that Vehicle Assembly Building is:  Almost as tall as the Washington Monument.  The building encloses more space than the largest of the great Pyramids of Giza.  This was really interesting:  It requires a complex system of ventilators to prevent the occurrence of clouds, and even rain, inside the building!

This showed what it looks like inside the Vehicle Assembly Building which is being used today.  We were thrilled to have gone into it back in the 80s.  It was enormous inside!

This is just one of the parts of that huge crawler-transporter that carries the rocket to the launching pad along the path.

In honor of Apollo 8 - the astronauts were the first humans to be launched by the Saturn V rocket in 1968 and first to orbit the moon.  The six-day mission set up being able to actually land on the moon.

Stage 2 of the Saturn V.

This one really means a lot to George and me because I will never forget that day--we were waiting for our first baby to be born and we joined with some of our friends in California where we lived at the time to watch this together in July of 1969.  This achieved President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.  The American flag was planted on the moon and the first samples of lunar soil were brought back.  What a proud day to be an American!

Stage 3 of Saturn V.

A replica of a moon rover.

And finally, the command module.

All of that length to have something so small and crowded where the astronauts are actually housed.

The space suit on loan from Capt. James Lovel.

Some really interesting facts about the Command Module which is shown below:

1)  It contained 15 miles of wiring, enough to wire 50 two-bedroom homes.

2)  Its three main re-entry parachutes were made of nearly an acre of cloth and more than a mile of suspension lines, yet they were vacuum-packed to fit into a niche the size of a small suitcase.

3)  The hydrogen and oxygen tanks were so well insulated that if they were filled with ice and placed in a 70 degree F. room, 8.5 years would pass before the ice melted.

4)  The command module used only 2000 watts of electricity, an amount similar to the energy required by an oven in an electric range.

5)  It was significantly larger than the Mercury and Gemini capsules.  Still it allowed for only 73 cubic feet of space per astronaut, just slightly more than the 68 cubic feet per passenger in an average compact car.

An exact replica of the moon buggy.

Then we all got to touch a moon rock which is older than 99.99 percent of all surface rocks on Earth.  Estimated to be formed approximately 3.7 billion years ago!

Going out in space was very dangerous, but coming home from space was no easy matter either.  Remember when the command module came into the atmosphere and splashed into the ocean?  Then divers would have to go out in the rough waters and open the capsule up and get the astronauts out and load them on to a helicopter.  We all sat by the television biting our nails until they were back on board!

One of the most well-known flights besides all the successful ones was Apollo 13 because it was such a scare to the entire nation.  "Houston, we have a problem," was uttered by James Lovell.  Although the rocket is fired from Kennedy Space Center, the actual control of the rocket is done after launch at the control center in Houston.

As the sign says:  "The Apollo 13 mission was aborted after a rupture in an oxygen tank caused the crew to lose power and life support systems in the Command and Service Modules.  The three astronauts used the Lunar Module as a lifeboat and were able to make their way safely back to Earth after circling the Moon to gain momentum for their trip home."  (The three astronauts did not include Tom Hanks.  Hah!  But he surely made this a reality in the movie and reminded us of how the nation really did draw together in prayer during this scary and crucial time.)

I love the statement by James Lovell:  "Apollo 13 showed the true technical capability of this country and what teamwork, motivation, and initiative could do in times of crisis."

George and my dad sitting on the bleachers where the families and dignitaries sit during the launch.  Everyone has to be at least three miles away from the site because of the noise and danger involved.

This was in honor of all the countries whose combined efforts are keeping the International Space Station operating.  We got to see a wonderful I-Max presentation of how the Space Station Astronauts live, work, and adapt to months of weightlessness.

As you read over some of the dangers that the first space explorers had to face, you realize some are quite comical now, but to the original astronauts, they were very real such as would microgravity affect vision?  Could a person eat and swallow in space?  Would the vacuum of space kill a person even if they were in the protective spacecraft?  Let alone, would there be aliens? 

The original space command center--so different from today where it takes hundreds of people to man every single part of the space launch and continued support.

 Yes, we were so happy that we spent the day at Kennedy Space Center.  Thanks, Dad, for thinking of this.  

Well, that's a rap on our month with my dad.  Oh, I must mention that George was in heaven because my dad absolutely loves Wendy's vanilla frosties which he and George got almost daily because George loves Wendy's chocolate frosties!  (George says he's got to lose weight after that month!)  And I took my dad to four movies because he loves popcorn as much as I do--forget about the movie--Hah!

Thanks, Dad, for spending this month with us.  We had an absolutely fantastic time.  Your bedroom is waiting for your next visit!