Escape to Florida!

This February we evaded the unending nightmare of Chicago winter by running to the Florida sun. We filled it with many awesome activities. Mary Ann had a rollerblade event to attend in Miami Beach, and I booked an Astronaut Training day at Cape Canaveral. In between we had a great day at a small Key Largo cabin resort.

Miami Beach

While Mary Ann was off rollerblading with 500 friends, I rented a bike and scooted around the whole of Miami Beach. Here is a picture of me in front of Jackie Gleason Theater, doing the "And away we go!" next to a sculpture of him doing the same.

Key Largo

I found this gem of a resort online. It took a couple of hours to get to Key Largo. This place prooved to be the perfect send off for Mary Ann, who had to get back to Chicago sooner than I did. We had a great cabin room connected to this awesome porch you see below.

Mary Ann enjoys a diet coke on our great little porch. Just steps from there was a small dock and beach with a small grove of palm trees, where we sat and relaxed, and took a kayak out and rowed around the bay.

We enjoyed a couple of Coronas, and I saw an opportunity to relive their commercial.

Cape Canaveral: Kennedy Space Center

Being the space nerd that I am, I couldn't go back to Florida without finally checking out the home of NASA, and the American space program. I went all out, and signed up for an all day astronaut training program, where I got to use similators, meet a real astronaut, and take a bus tour to the Space Shuttle launch site, and International Space Station assembly complex. Good fun.

Here am I standing near one of the Mercury Space Capsule, the type John Glenn and Alan Shepard rode into space. Quite small, the cockpit is very claustrophobic. Behind it is a Saturn rocket laying on it's side.

Here I'm in front of a Shuttle model at the Kennedy Space Center tourist center.