“Houston, this is ground control at Kennedy Space Center. We have a couple of alien weirdos that have landed, and we are looking for guidance on getting them sent back to the southwestern United States, where you guys are more accustomed to dealing with their type. Can you lend us a hand, please?” Yep, that’s right, the weirdos are us, and seeing we are in Orlando and just down the road from Kennedy, why not pay a visit?

Holy wow, our luck is in superabundance. We are getting the opportunity to see the nearly finished Destiny Module, which is the science lab that will soon be joining the International Space Station that just launched last year. This integral part of that mission is scheduled to go to space via one of the Space Shuttles when it’s ready. Now if we could just get back here to Florida to witness one of those launches.

I don’t know if you can see her under this giant Saturn V rocket, but that’s Caroline being dwarfed by this stupendously large engine.

Seeing we still had quite a bit of free time today, I decided to feed Caroline to the gators.

Not really, but we did go out on a nearby Everglade on a fan boat to gain a different perspective of the Florida landscape. Turns out that fan boats are LOUD !!! They are also exhilarating.

This is the first bald eagle we have ever seen in the Wild. Seconds after I snapped this photo, that eagle dropped out of the tree and snatched that gator I shot in that other photo, and it flew away with it wriggling in its talons. It was an amazing sight I don’t believe we’ll ever see again or that we really saw this time either.

Because my wife likes photos of me as much as I like photos of her, I feel obliged to post some of me from time to time. It is her birthday trip, after all.

We were able to spend a good long time out here going far and wide over these wetlands that had all sorts of wildlife and hermits hidden away in corners and places people don’t often go. Our guide was a great storyteller who shared a ton of info about Nascar, swamps, hunting, and how tasty turtle stew can be.

Nothing like seeing a bald cypress with your own eyes to get that feeling you’ve been to a swamp. The dark, mysterious waters, what they hide, and who travels them is an amazing place for our imaginations to travel to.

Before we drove back to Orlando, we needed to have a romantic walk along the ocean in the early evening, plus Caroline had to doff her shoes for her first walk in the waters of the Atlantic.