Officially starting a road trip. We’re still in the driveway but ready to roll.Our first step is Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. We did the incline ride.Fun ride! The rail cars have great visibility because of all the glassWe passed another rail car on our way down the inclineView from on top of Lookout Mountain. That’s Chattanooga below.Not sure you could see this, but these real cars are built and stand at a weird angleNot sure if this shows the angle of the car. But it’s ready to go downhill, but everything is straight vertical.Just like the cable cars in San Francisco, these incline cars work by large motors, pulling the cablesOur campsite at a KOA just outside of Chattanooga, TennesseeThis is NASA’s assembly building. What makes this unique is that it’s 21 stories tall but with no impeachments insideWe’re at NASA’s rocket launch center. The viewing area is 6 miles away from the actual launchpads for safety reasons.NASA has an entire building dedicated to the Apollo programThat’s a Space X Falcon Nine lifting offThe sound was funAs the rocket reaches a certain altitude, all of a sudden, a contra appears for just a few seconds before the rocket climbs higherInside the Apollo space program building. Very impressive because they have all the original memorabilia.That’s the true space shuttle that was named Atlantis influence space multiple timesMore pictures of Atlantis with it dock doors openThose are the original launch consoles that they brought in as a displayMom, standing by one of the practice Mars RoversThe racket and of a SpaceX Falcon Nine rocket. Those are called raptor engines.Notice the arms that fold out when the rocket comes back to earth and south lands on the recovery padMaking our way to the Florida KeysWe had No-See-Ums bugs in our campsite out on the keys. They really chewed up mom badly.We stayed at a beautiful KOA right on the ocean. This is sunrise from the beach area.Went fishing off a near-by bridge. The fish I caught were truly interesting. And boy oh boy, they bite and fight much harder than the fish up north.We took a ferry from Key West out to Dry Tortugas National Park. It was a three hour ferry ride each direction.Mom had her motion bands on and took Dramamine just to play it safe. She didn’t have any issues at all!!!As we dock at Fort Jefferson’s pier, you could see there’s no one there except a park Ranger waiting to greet us. The fort was built in the mid 1800s and was never used even once.Walking around Fort Jefferson this seems like a pretty cool pictureThe view from up on top of Fort JeffersonWe went snorkeling, which was supposed to be really unique, but so many people have trashed the waters and the coral there, but there was really nothing to seeKey West lobster trap Christmas tree in downtown Key WestNext step was to the Everglades national Park. We took a walk down one of the paths there. Known as we had longer pants on and long sleeve shirts to combat the mosquitoes.Along that path, we found an NFL football that we’re guessing, got washed the shore during a big storm or hurricane, since it was pretty far up and tangled in some bushesWhen we first started a nature walk, mom and I were wondering if we would see an alligator and within the first five minutes we saw this guy sunbathing off to the sideThere were some very cool and intriguing paths that we walk down. The diversity of plant and wildlife in the Everglades is astounding.An older couple pointed out these tree snails that are unique to the Everglades. The following pictures show the diversity of colors that were really amazing.Oh, look at that cute little lizard !!Seeing these trees with all the hanging Spanish moss was truly beautifulYep, that’s a manatee there. They’re just big blobs and don’t do anything. They’re basically water cows.This is a crocodile since he’s in saltwater. Alligators are freshwater and crocodiles are saltwater. Crocodiles grow a little bigger.Our next stop was to visit Terry Blake up by Gainesville Florida. The campground we stayed at had a nice little trail that I took a walk down on Thanksgiving morning.Just a picture from my hike on Thanksgiving morningCute baby frog that I found on the trailThe way trees grow in Florida really do make some interesting picturesThis is a picture of Greta at the campground by Terry Blake
