Kennedy Space Center, again

Hi, all.  I am going to do two posts for today, the first of my photos and the second of Lee's.  We spent a second day at the Kennedy Space Center, this time on the bus tour.  I think I mentioned in a previous blog that last time (15 years ago) we saw armadillos, alligators, and hogs.  This time, one or two alligators, and no armadillos or hogs.  I asked about it, and was told that the armadillos generally stay in the woods when it is dry, and don't come out until the rainy season.  ~sigh~  I love armadillos, and was so looking forward to seeing them.

At any rate, we did see some of the NASA stuff, of course.  Since the shuttle is launching Friday, it is on its pad, and we were able to get somewhat close to it.  We couldn't see the shuttle itself because it was behind the external tank and rocket boosters, but the sight was impressive nonetheless:

Everyone has seen photographs of the building where the rockets and boosters and all are assembled.  It is 52 stories high, and the footprint is 8 acres in size!  It is huge, but also beautiful in a graphic sort of way, and is fun to take pictures of.  I love its clean lines and bold colors.  Did you know that each star in the flag is six feet high???

Lee was in his element.  Here, he is taking photos of one of the instructive labels out in the field, so that he won't forget the details (actually, he said he was doing it for my benefit, so I would get the blog right.  Maybe so...)

You have probably seen the very large platform that carries the shuttle to the launching pad.  I think the tour guide said it takes 6 hours to go 3 miles, or some such, inching along.  It goes 0.007 miles per gallon of fuel!  

Here's the runway upon which the shuttle lands when it is able to land on the East Coast!

Our last stop was yet another exhibit building, this one focusing on the Apollo moon landings.  Here are a couple of the Apollo mission emblems, with one of the lunar landing modules in the background (the gold foil at the bottom of the photo):

And finally, the most exciting part of  my day - for some reason, in the "backyard" of this particular facility, was a hangout for black vultures.   I have no idea why.  But it gave me a closeup view of black vultures.  The discoloration of these photos is because I took them through a window:

You don't often see black vultures in Philadelphia, most are turkey vultures.  They are common here, though, and I saw them in the Carolinas as well.