OK, it wasn’t the Space Shuttle.

I wasn’t even close enough to hear it.

It was over much faster than expected.

And René had the camera while out weeding the fields so I have no nifty pictures of my own to show.

But it was exciting nonetheless.

Thanks to Florida Today’s Flame Trench Blog, it was almost like I was right at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad SLC-17.

Almost.

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Let’s get one thing straight; Jim and I are not Gamblers. The few times we’ve found ourselves in Vegas, I would stand there gawking at the Gambling species, dumbfounded as I watched them willingly toss money away.

But last week while waiting for the space shuttle to take off, our fun campground neighbors Carol and John invited us to join them on a “free” four-hour casino cruise. In Florida, where gambling is illegal, Sun Cruz Casinos will take passengers out to blow money at sea, three miles offshore in international waters. They had a free shuttle that would pick us up right at our campground. “You get all of the free food and booze you want!” my neighbor said excitedly.

Now that caught my attention. Whenever I hear “Free” and “Booze” in the same sentence, this cheapskate gets happy. All that, and we’d get a “free” cruise in Florida too. Ah, the things trip memories are made of! I grabbed Jim and said “let’s go!”

Later, neither one of us would realize that we were about to set foot on a third rate, smoky casino from hell, unable to escape!

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We’ve finally made it to White Rabbit Acres organic farm in Vero Beach for our extended workamping stay after spending too much time waiting for the space shuttle to lift off.

We did have fun – and lots of margaritas – with our new friends in Port Canaveral. But our longer than expected stay just proves that time flies like, well … it seems to fly better than the Space Shuttle Atlantis right now anyway.

We didn’t even have time to catch everyone up on our stay in St. Augustine. René wrote about our visit to the Fountain of Youth, but the oldest city in the U.S offers much more history than that small artesian well which now rests some twelve feet below a room of dioramas depicting Ponce de León with his newfound Seminole friends.

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I’m not just talking about the first Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum, nor the umpteenth Thomas Kinkade Gallery. For starters, the Castillo de San Marcos is much more prominent and majestic. Walking its grounds, I couldn’t help but think of all the bloody battles that took place on the same spot so long ago.

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Now the shuttle isn’t launching until tomorrow. And even that is a big maybe at this point, so we’re heading south tomorrow morning. Like everyone else here in Jetty Park, we keep asking ourselves how many days we can keep saying we’ll stay just one more night. Besides, we need to be good workampers and can’t keep the farmer waiting any longer.

We’re thinking about getting up extra early and shooting down to Vero Beach so we can get set up, meet the farmer then head back out to the beach or somewhere with a decent view North by 3:00 so we can at least see the shuttle head skyward, if it does indeed take off.

Anyway, here’s a few photos from the last time we got up before dawn – during our stay in St. Augustine. We had never seen the sun rise over the Atlantic before, just plenty of sunsets over the Pacific. The weather was calm and the sunrise was as colorful as the drink. The only thing missing was the tequila…

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Before we left Eureka, we kept a list of Places to See, and St. Augustine was high on that list. After all, when would we ever get the opportunity again to drink from the Fountain of Youth and experience this magical water for ourselves? We had to see it.

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Due to some false LH2 ECO sensor readings, the STS-122 mission launch was scrubbed yesterday delaying Space Shuttle Atlantis from taking off until Saturday afternoon at the earliest.

We intend to stay one more day here in Jetty Park in hope that the countdown will continue as planned. If not, we will head on to our obligations at the farm in Vero Beach about an hour south. The view of takeoff won’t be nearly as spectacular there, but we’ve postponed our workamping stay long enough already.

In the meantime, here are some scenes from our first day in Florida …

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And here is something I realized after our first night at Mike Roess Gold Head Branch Florida State Park …

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We were offline for a couple days in St. Augustine. There were just too many trees. Way too many very low trees, for us to get a satellite signal at Anastasia State Park. It did however give us a little time to play tourist, and take way too many pictures. Much more about that coming soon…

Now we have touched down – just about ten miles south of John F. Kennedy Space Center – at Jetty Park in Port Canaveral. Our new full-timing friends told us about the shuttle launch tomorrow and we got a great site with what looks like a good view for takeoff. I just checked the NASA Shuttle mission countdown clock, and it looks like all systems are still Go. And from the bright white glow on the horizon, it indeed appears so. Read all about this mission, and follow its live coverage with videos on the STS-122 Launch Blog for the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Jim’s right; I had never heard of Okefenokee or the Pogo comic strip. Hard to believe that even after 12 years together, 24/7, we still don’t know everything about each other.

Okefenokee wasn’t on our trip route, but when he told me about it, I knew that I liked the word; Okefenokee. It sticks in your brain like glue, like a mosquito to your skin, like swamp mud on your boots. Doubtful that we’d ever be in that part of the U.S. anytime in the next 100 years, we headed away from the Carolina coast, right into lower south east Georgia’s swampland.

We went looking for gators, and came back with our first adventure feature presentation …

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We had a great time in Savannah, filled with so much history and beautiful architecture. While it’s not the most walkable or bike friendly cities we’ve been to, it doesn’t seem like a bad place to live. There’s diversity, history, and a whole lotta good eats; three of the most critical things that make a city thrive.

Since we won’t be updating our Gallery pages until we give it an overhaul, using our new plug in, here are some pics from our Savannah visit.

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Next time, see how we go hunting for Gator in Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge!

When I was a little kid, my Mom would listen to her favorite oldies station, humming along to 1950s hits while she did housework. No doubt that many of those hits were written by Johnny Mercer.

My Dad says Mercer was the greatest songwriter of all time, penning countless songs for Broadway shows and movies. Mercer was also the co-founder of Capitol Records. He is buried in the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, so this week while we were in town, we went to pay our respects to the musical legend.

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