A little bit of rain and little bit of sun

Trip Start Apr 08, 2009

Trip End May 04, 2009

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of United States Houston, Texas, United States
Monday, April 13, 2009

After another long driving day yesterday (7.5 hrs - which may not be much for the 20 and 30 somethings, but is a bit of a chore when your over 60) we finally arrived at our first planned destination, Houston, Texas. We checked in to the motel, dumped the luggage, and immediately set out to find a restaurant someplace in the Houston area where we were to meet our friends, Tom and Gail who, along with their daughter, were down visiting their son and his family. We were unable to properly program "Garminia" our GPS unit, who decided to be rather snippish and refused to recognize the restaurant location. (Is this taking personification to far?) Thank goodness for other forms of modern technology as Gail talked us into the restaurant. While it was a little difficult to converse with everyone in the lively restaurant (read loud) the company and dinner were enough to revive us and fade the drive from memory (which is good thing, since we have a lot more car time ahead of us).

Today we woke to Houston being under a tornado watch until 4 PM with severe thunderstorms and hail predicted thoughout the day. But seeing how we only had today to really see anything, we went ahead and ventured out. Our first stop was the San Jacinto Battlefield Memorial and the USS Texas anchorage. Deciding to clamber around an all metal battleship during severe thunderstorms was probably not the brightest idea I ever had, but any true battleship aficianado can't pass up the chance to see one of these incredible ships.

San Jacinto is the site of the battle that guaranteed Texas independence from Mexico. The battle occurred after the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad and resulted in the defeat and capture of General Santa Anna, the Mexican ruler. According to the Texans the monument is largest stone monument in the world and is between 12' -15' taller than the Washinton monument (which claims the title of tallest obelisk in the world - the difference being that San Jacinto is an obelisk built on a base that houses a museum, while Washington is a straight obelisk).

San Jacinto Monument

The USS Texas was what I really came to see. As all my wargaming friends know and understand, our wives patiently put up with all this running around battlefields and crawling around tanks, ships and whatever. Janet was smart enough to stay in the car instead of walking around in the rain for the hour or so that it took me to finally realize that I getting very wet. But the Texas was neat. It's the only "dreadnaught" (the prototype of the modern battleship) type of battleship surviving, and is also the only surviving battleship that fought in both WW I and WW II. She was launched in 1912 and commissioned in 1914, so she is approaching her 100th birthday.

USS Texas

Anyway, the ship was really interesting as I'd previously visited more modern battleships, including the last battleships ever built, the Iowa class ships, and the differences were considerable. Quick facts (and then I promise I won't mention them again) USS Texas - 27,000 tons displacement, 573' long, 21 knots maximum speed, ten 14" guns main battery; USS Iowa - 52,000 tons displacement, 890' long, 31 knots maximum speed, nine 16" guns main battery. So it was somewhat a revelation to me coming from the modern (relatively speaking) battleships and their close to 1,000' lengths and see the earlier battleships that were 300' shorter.

After I got back to the car and sort of dried out (have you ever tried drying yourself with those little bitty kleenex in those travel packs - thus the "sort of dried out"), we headed over to the Johnson Space Center for Janet's portion of the day.

When Janet taught 4th grade at Briargate, one of the science units was space. After the Challenger Learning Center opened in Woodstock, the 4th grades from Cary 26 participated in a day long Challenger experience at the Learning Center. So actually seeing the real thing was high on Janet's list as she had participated so many years with the 4th grade version of it. The focus of the Houston Space Center (the commercial end of the Johnson Space Center) is kids, but the tram tour that goes back into the JSC is primarily for adults. We were surprised at the high security - we all had to go through metal detectors with armed guards present, and the JSC itself was surrounded by many barriers designed to foil would be terrorists.

The Johnson Space Center is were all NASA mission are controlled once the lift off the pad. It's also were much of the astronaut training takes place. Since it's a working facility, it's not uncommon for tours to see astronauts training in many of the simulators or to see mission control in operation. The tour had three stops. The first was Mission Control. Janet was pleased to see that the Challenger Learning Centers used an accurate reproduction (although not as large) of the JSC Mission Control. While there are multiple mission control facilities used various times for various missions at JSC, one is manned 24/7 365 days a year, and that is the MC for the International Space Station. Unfortunately, we were'nt allowed to see that room.

The second stop was at the primary simulator facility for astronaut training. The room that houses the various simulators is over 200 yards long. It contains full size replicas of the International Space Station, the space shuttle including the bay area (minus the wings), 2 - 3 crew portions of the space shuttle, an operational robot arm and other simulators. Since it was Easter Sunday, no one was working so we missed out on seeing anything in operation.

The final stop was a small rocket park, the primary display being one of the three remaining Saturn V rockets, the same rockets that took the astronauts to the moon. The rocket has been fully restored after spending years outside exposed to the elements and is now house in an environmentally controlled building. This was another immense building. The Saturn V was huge. It's over 120 yards long, and the five engines that powered the first stage (each larger than a full size pick up truck) generate over 7.5 million lbs. of thrust. Very cool. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the museum and displays, but the highlight of the trip was the JSC tour.

By the way, the rain that was making my visit to the Texas miserable, disappeared while we were at the Space Center. The morning that started out dark, threatening severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, turned out to be a beautiful, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky afternoon in the 80's. So we went back to San Jacinto to take pictures in better weather!