Yep. The little vacation is done. I’ve actually been back since Friday but I wanted to take some time and hang out more with my friend who I went on the trip with and who was only in town as a part of his own vacation and also took Sunday to just try to rest from everything.
I’ve got a more in-depth article planned about the trip but to put things simply, it was pretty awesome. I got to do most everything I wanted to do and it had its own interesting and unexpected moments that come with any adventure of this type.
Being stuck in a car for 3 hours+ on a drive across 200+ miles turned out to be far more fun than you would have thought it would be, but given the fact I was riding with one of my best friends it proved to be a pretty great chance for us to goof around across Mississippi and Alabama. The fact that the car we were taking was his 1973 Mercury Montego was an added bonus – that car of his is just kind of awesome.
We didn’t actually have anything major go wrong. There were a few moments early on we feared the car might not want to make the trip, and we arrived later than expected to Huntsville, but as it would turn out that was just the perfect amount of time for what we actually wanted to do and still feel like sticking around for the Biergarten event that evening.
Random Agena Target Vehicle image, to break up text.
After a night in an oddly pleasant motel, we began the trip back to Memphis which seemed to go far faster than the trip to Huntsville. I’d blame familiarity with what’s up and down the highway we took, and the fact we weren’t under pressure to get somewhere as quickly as possible – we could take our time getting home.
I took 2 hours of video and shot over 400 photos (those images being on my personal Facebook, with some to be shared here in the near future) and honestly had a great time. The Space and Rocket center wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, though, especially since they are beginning restoration efforts on many of the boosters in the Rocket Garden portion of the facility, but the Saturn V hall was in many ways far better than I was expecting or indeed hoping, so it balanced out.
As I said, I have a ton more to say about the trip and will be sharing that in an upcoming article set.
For now, it’s time to get back to writing. Coming up I have even more space stuff to cover, and hopefully will get back to the more normal gaming and crazy tech stuff following that.
More to come, as always.