Day 97: KSC (Part 2), Gatorland, and Laundry!!! (10/17/2010)

Davin and I got up at 12:30pm our time (7:30am Florida time). We quickly got ready to go and jumped in the car to head back to the Kennedy Space Center. We were on the road a little after 8am and arrived at the KSC around 9:20am. We took a little bit longer route to avoid one of the toll booths, so we only paid $2.50 this time.

At the KSC, we watched the two IMAX films. They were really cool, especially in 3D. This is the first time I’ve seen a documentary type film in 3D. Usually it’s cartoons that are made 3D. When it’s a film with real people doing real things and it’s in 3D it really seems like you are in the room experiencing events first hand. I thought that was really neat. They should make more real people films in 3D.


Next, we went to the have to the Shuttle Launch Experience. It’s flight simulator of a shuttle launch. You get tipped up into a vertical position and then the whole thing shakes when the rockets ignite. It supposed to be a fairly accurate simulation of take off. It was a fun and interesting experience. I definitely wouldn’t want to do it for real though! Strapping myself to that much rocket fuel is not my idea of fun!



We left KSC around 1pm, and drove back to Kissimmee, Florida. There we visited Gatorland. We had fun looking at the different kinds of alligators and crocodiles.


We saw alligators jump out of the water to eat whole, store bought chickens, and we saw a show about different kinds of snakes found in Florida, as well as one called ‘Gator Wrestling’. It wasn’t really gator wrestling though, it was just a close encounter with an alligator and we learned some really interesting things about them. We also filmed all the shows we saw, so we can see them again.


I also enjoyed seeing the leucistic alligators. They were very pretty with their white skin and blue eyes. The water birds that liked to sit on the backs of floating alligators were funny. It just seemed so incongruous, but I guess most of the time the alligators are pretty laid back, and the birds have fast reaction times.


We walked through the swamp path and admired the habitat, and then walked by the breeding marsh where lots of alligators have a nice lake to live in. It’s nice that Gatorland works to protect giant alligators that would otherwise have to be destroyed for terrorizing human settlements.


A couple hours of Gators was enough for us. We headed home and stopped at Pita Oven for a gyros dinner. We also stopped at Kmart for some necessary train supplies: Dr. Pepper and chips and salsa! Sadly, we didn’t find any chips or salsa suited to our needs (no hot salsas).


At the hotel, we ate our gyros, and then we prepared to FINALLY do our laundry. Our clothes were last laundered by our Stepmom before we left Germany. We decided not to do it our last night in London, then never found time or a laundromat open in the evening of our two week Great Britain tour, then we decided we could do it on the Norwegian Sun (because QM2 provides free laundry areas on all decks of the ship), then we found out the Norwegian Sun only has paid $25 a bag laundry services..., and finally in Florida we ended up at our resort hotel which conveniently has coin operated laundry services.


We got our clothes going in the washer, and returned to our room. Davin spent over an hour talking to Mom on my telephone. His cell phone has gone missing. We had it this morning, and now it’s gone. Who knows what happened to it. Meanwhile, I worked on blog updates. We had to dry the clothes twice. In fact, the second time we split the load and ran two different driers. In the end, we were happy to have all clean clothes again!


While we were waiting for the laundry, I started getting a sore throat. It only got worse, and I became quite irritable. Also, the internet in our room was very bad and basically didn’t work. So, after we got the laundry back to our room, I took a quick bath and went to bed. We had the yoghurt from the QM2 for dinner. I just wasn’t up for going out again, and Davin didn’t want to go by himself.