A view from the (honey) moon.: August 2012

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Last Day

Day 5: The Last Day

We decided to get up and watch the sun rise this morning. It was lovely. I also collected some nice shells. Every trip to the beach I would collect a few. I found some really nice ones too. The sandpiper is always on the beach enjoying the local cuisine. He is neat to watch. He never lets the waves get him and runs back up the shore to avoid getting soaked.

Breakfast today was turkey sausage links and the seasoned potatoes again. I got another waffle. I love my waffles. We then watched Good Morning America while our stomaches settled. It was a lovely morning and not too hot. The temperatures were great all week.

After a couple hours on the beach we decided it was time for lunch. We wanted to check out Zachary's Family Restaurant. Brian got a french dip au jus with fries and I got the ruben and fries. The ruben was good at first but the second half was not as good, it seemed like it had way too much dressing and the sauerkraut was not as tasty. Brian thought his sandwich was very good. The fries were also good. They were nice and crispy.

After lunch we wanted to try out the frozen yogurt place to see how it compared to the place that just opened up next to us at home. This places had 2 more flavors than ours and had a ton more toppings to choose from than ours. It was also only 44 cents per ounce whereas the one at home is 55 cents per ounce. This place was really nice and very clean and nicely decorated. We liked it a lot.

We went back to the hotel to relax. About to take an afternoon nap and then Brian got a NWS alert on his phone and we both were like "OMG NO WAY" We didn't even get a severe thunderstorm warning. Went right to tornado warning. Kinda startled us a little. We hopped up and went to look outside to see how close it was to us. We also turned the TV to a local station to see the weather alert and saw the storm was south of us. We stood out on the balcony hoping to see a funnel cloud or tornado or waterspout. We could not see anything through the rain but kept watching. After it was over the new station showed photos viewers took of a waterspout forming from that storm.

After the storms has past we went back to the beach! I found this cool looking shell but it was closed like a clam is and i did not know what it was. I put it back thinking it was a little animal living in it. I was walking up and down the shore looking for shells when the waves uncovered about 10 of these little things and a few were a very beautiful blue and all of a sudden just as fast as they were uncovered they buried themselves in the sand! I was so surprised I ran back to Brian to tell him and to grab my camera and hope to see them again. I got a few good videos of these little guys. They were so awesome and definitely made my night. We both love the beach so much I can't wait to plan our next vacation to a beach.

We wanted to try out Boston Beef & Seafood for dinner and after a quick shower to get all the sand off of us we headed out to dinner. Brian got an appetizer of clam chowder soup, and I ordered the potato skins appetizer. For dinner I got a popcorn shrimp platter and Brian got the haddock platter. They each came with fries and onion rings. Everything was very delicious. We were going to use a visa gift card we had gotten and then the waiter came back saying the computers would not take the gift card. That was very shocking since they said they took mastercard and visa (the gift card was a mastercard). So we just used our debit card this time. We both cold not believe their restaurant could not take a gift card.

Afterwards we chilled in the hotel room until bed time. We did not want the honeymoon to be over it was such a relaxing great week.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Day 4: Swimming With The Rainbows

Good morning. We slept in this morning til almost 9! We headed down for breakfast hoping there was still bacon. We heard someone say they have bacon about once a week and it was going to be today. They had good seasoned potatoes and lots of bacon, Brian got them and some eggs. I got a waffle today I love them so much :) After breakfast we went over to buy some more sunblock since we seem to be using a lot of it. We got back and headed down to the beach for about an hour.

We then headed out to Kennedy Space Center. It was only about a 35 minute drive up to the center. We took a bus ride tour. It drove around to show us the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building), Mission Control, and got to see the Crawler which moves a max speed of 2mph without a load and a max of 1mph when it is moving the rockets. It was pretty awesome seeing such huge machines.

The first stop the bus made was the Launch Complex 39 Observatory Gantry. From there we could see the old launch pad and the new one they are working on building still. I zoomed way in to get a good picture of it. The view from top of the 4 story building was beautiful. There was so much land.

We got back on the bus and the next stop was the Apollo / Saturn V Center. We watched a short video and then got to see what the old mission control room looked like. They said it was the actual room they used back for the first several launches. When the shuttle lifted off they actually had the window behind/above us glow red and shake loudly. It was cool watching it.

We left that room and came into a large room showing one of the shuttles. It was so huge. They do not look that big when you are watching a launch on tv. It was cool seeing them up close. There was so much there to see. A lot of the suits they used to wear too were there. Still all covered in moon dust. They also have moon samples suspended in a glass pyramid for us to see.

The bus then took us back to the Kennedy Space Center complex and we waited for a long time to go into the simulator. We had to put all out stuff in lockers since you were not allowed to bring anything with you. After waiting for a while we were allowed upstairs and continued to wait for what seemed like forever, but was probably like 25 minutes. They took us to a room and showed us some more of the launch videos and even had some smoke/steam come from the floor as the shuttle took off. After this video (about 3-4 minutes) we walked into another room and waited to go into the simulator (a 4 minute wait). We have no pictures of any of this because we had to stow them in the lockers. We were finally allowed to go into the simulator. I was a littler nervous cause I did not know what to expect. We got in our seats and got buckled in and were ready to go. The launch simulator started and we were moved to a 90 degree angle facing straight up like we were about to take off. They started the count down and began to shake us. Our faces felt like jello. My thoughts was I felt like my face would have looked like the runners in the olympics when they run so fast their faces shake. After we got into orbit they stopped the shaking and had us pointed down a little. At the end we checked out the gift shop and headed back to Cocoa Beach.

For dinner tonight we stopped at the Shark Pit, located in the Sheraton Hotel. It was really cool having the fish tank in the restaurant. It even had a shark in it! I tired so hard to get a good picture of him but he was never on the top he always rode the bottom of the tank and people were always in my way. On the way out I got a good one of him.

Just before sunset we saw a .... RAINBOW :) At this time we headed back to the beach!!

And of course the rainbow was still there when we got there. ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY DOUBLE RAINBOW! We were swimming and the rainbow was with us the whole time. The sun was setting and the clouds were glowing and the rainbow was still there. It was sweet. Brian also rode the boogie board for a little bit. Then we sat in the water letting the waves move us around. It was cool. Afterwards we sat on our towels and soaked in the moment. The lights on the large ships came on and it made me think of christmas lights on the water.

The sunset was colorful and it started to get dark quicker as the sun was already set. The beach was peaceful. A few families were down there too. We headed back up to our room to chill for the rest of the night.

Day 3: Relativity

Morning:

Another day another adventure. We decided in the morning that we would check the sunrise in hopes to get another glorious morning like we did on day 1. It wasn't as glorious but it was still surely the coolest thing.

After that we decided to get some breakfast as per usual in the main foyer here at the hotel (it's free) and this time there was an interesting sausage gravy, other than that we got our usual which has been apple juice, scrambled eggs, and biscuits and Tamarah went back to have a second biscuit with jam.

Afternoon:

After our breakfasts had time to settle we wandered our way down to the beach to get in some swimming and wading and sun. There were a TON of people on the beach, but as it seems down by the hotel entrance, there's almost nobody. I'm not complaining due to the open area for us to swim, it' just weird.

We spent about an hour at the beach and we didn't want to spend too many more because we were running out of our like 9th ounce of sun block. It seems no matter the size of the sun block we use a TON of it. Thankfully were both still not in pain, so I think it's doing the trick.

Next we spent the rest of the afternoon traveling and visiting Tamarah's relatives in Sanford. Her grandmother was not able to attend the wedding and ended up watching it through Skype. She needed to have more meaningful object from it so we brought a special gift to her and brought video's from my Aunt and Uncle of the dances from our wedding. They were tickled to death and we left very happy we were able to make them happy and have a good day.

Evening:

We were here to get beach and waves and sun and we weren't going to leave that so we decided to catch some waves before we headed off to dinner. After we returned from Tamarah's relatives (3 hours worth of driving) we chilled on the beach where the sun was low and there was finally a reason for us to not worry about cooking and enjoying the mood. It was probably the most zen i've been in a long while. I got some swimming in and then laid on my back and watched the wispy clouds go by while listening to the sound of the waves hitting the shore and the families having fun around me. Here's a picture of a really long ship that has been chilling out on the horizon for a while. Tamarah also got a little "romantic" and decided to draw our names in the sand and put a heart in between. I guess marriage doesn't end the mushy romantic stuff?? :P

Lovely Sunset!

Because we ended up spending quite a bit of time on the beach we ran out of options for dinner. It was around 8:00 and we found a few places open until 9:00PM and hopped down the road into Sonny's Real Pit BBQ. Tamarah ordered the pulled pork and I ordered the pulled chicken. Everything was great, including the waiting staff. If we come down here again, we will not hesitate to go here again.

After putting up with a very loud and bright thunderstorm and finishing laundry at about 11:30PM we finally got the chance to go to bed.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

MOAS

Day 2: MOAS

We decided to sleep in today. Woke up to a wonderful morning and had the left over pizza for breakfast. We relaxed for a little while before getting ready for the day.

We wanted to tour Kennedy Space Center for the day but decided the price was way too much per person. We then headed north to Daytona Beach area to check out the Museum of Arts & Sciences. We drove past Daytona Speedway and got some pictures of the outside. It was empty there today.

The Museum of Arts & Sciences was nice. We got there and were able to use our college ID cards to get a student rate on admission. No photos were allowed in the majority of the museum. There was a lot of neat stuff in all the exhibits. They had on display a giant ground sloth. Luckily photos were allowed for this guy. He was huge.

There were a few people taking photos in one of the exhibits. Even posing in front of things and using flash. I do not know how they did not get caught. I decided to sneakily use my iPhone to get some photos of a few things. Making sure the flash was off and sound was off. One section looked like a Coca Cola museum. 5c for a coke back then and 25c for a 6 pack. We even saw a bus that looked like it was made just for carrying cokes.

In the same room was what Brian called the build-a-bear workshop. There was cases and cases of bears and a large house filled with bears. There was even a bride and groom bear :)

They had a planetarium show at 2:00 so we stayed to watch it. Brian was shocked I had never seen one before. There were no photos allowed for a good reason, the room was dark and it would be rude to have the light from a camera ruining the mood. I snapped a pic before it all started. He had a true false trivia on the screen as people were arriving for the show. He started out showing us pictures of the Curiosity rover on Mars. It was pretty cool seeing the photos. He started the show with the sun setting and slowly brought out the stars. He showed us a few of the constellations and how to find others. We saw where all the planets show up in the sky and which ones you can view just before the sun rises. I believe we saw Mercury the morning we watched the sun rise.

Afterwards we headed back down to Cocoa Beach for dinner. We hit a few rain patches on the way down. We based the route we took on where the storm was moving. We avoided the heaviest part. However the storm was very slow moving. One cell was moving south, another north, and they merged together and just got stronger. We had dinner at Red Lobster and were seated by a window. This allowed us to watch as the rain came through. I got a strawberry daiquiri and it was delicious. It had a huge strawberry on the top of the glass. We both got the unlimited shrimp and tried a few different varieties of the shrimp. It was all really tasty.

We got back to the room and wants to go out to the beach after letting our stomachs settle. The storms were very unpredictable. We really wanted to go down to the beach but decided it was too dangerous with the approaching storm. The storms took so long to finally make its way to us we were sad that we could have spent at least an hour at the beach tonight. The sunset was very yellow and orange tonight.

And guess what we saw just before the sun set for the night....

....

A RAINBOW!! Third night here. Third rainbow! How awesome is that?? Very awesome!