We have had many chances over the years to visit the Kennedy Space Center. Kathryn had an internship a few summers ago in Cocoa Beach, FL, which is just 15 minutes away from the Kennedy Space Center. And we spent a summer in Cape Canaveral, FL, when I was 11 and Kathryn was 8, while our mom spent 10 weeks working at NASA. And yet we still had never been to Kennedy Space Center.

We finally made it there during a weekend trip (the same one where we went skydiving!), and finally got to experience everything we had been missing! It was great – there was so much to see and do and learn! What I liked most was that there were so many mediums to learn, from a bus tour to interactive displays and 3D multi-media presentations.

The staff at the ticket booth recommended that we start with the bus tour because it departs every 15 minutes and you don’t want to leave it until later and miss out. So we headed to the bus depot, and got on the next bus for a tour of the Space Center grounds. We saw the Vehicle Assembly Building where the rockets and shuttles are built, a couple of the launch pads and a bonus of local wildlife – an alligator and a bald eagle nest!

The bus tour ended at the Apollo/Saturn V center, where the main attraction is the Saturn V rocket that was the length of the entire building. We also touched a moon rock and saw a Lunar Module that had to be hung from the ceiling because it was built to land on the moon and can’t support it’s own weight in earth’s gravity.

Then we headed back to the visitor center to the Atlantis exhibit, where the retired Atlantis Space Shuttle is on display. Besides the shuttle, highlights of the exhibit were the Shuttle launch experience simulator ride and the memorial honoring the crews that lost their lives on the Columbia and the Challenger.

I’m glad we finally made it to Kennedy Space Center – there was much more to do than I expected and so many different ways to engage. We had a really fun day!