Huntsville Sightseeing

Saturday, September 20

Enterprise Car Rental picked me up this morning and we got a rental car for two days. We promptly went out and bought about ten days worth of groceries.

We also did at little looking around Decatur, Alabama and I worked on getting the blog up to date.

Later in the day we spent some time with Dave Smith, the captain of Cat’s Cradle. I had emailed a picture of him going by us to him. He returned the favor and let me directly copy some of his pictures. The seven pictures included here are all his.

The first is Memories at the front of the Pickwick lock with Dahlin, a 52 foot Hatteraus, between us.





This is Bob and Sue on the Hatteraus.

This is Doc and Jean on a 44 foot Manta power catamaran. They are from Sarasota, FL; they are going down the Tenn-Tom to the Gulf and home to Sarasota to complete the Great Loop which they started last October.






The next two are of us near the top of the lock and waiting for the lock gates to completely open.

The last two are the next day when Cat’s Cradle went by us because he was going farther that day.












Sunday, September 21,

Today we took the rental car the 15 miles over to Huntsville and did some sightseeing. First we toured the Space and Rocket Center. I am not going to describe the entire operation in words or pictures. I few of the highlights include a full size shuttle mock up, and actual used command module from an Apollo Lunar mission and a mock up of the Hubble Telescope.



They are next to (on the edge of I am not sure which) the Redstone Arsenal, where much of the early work on the U.S. Rocket and space program was done.

I am sure there is a great deal more on the internet than I can describe, I will just says that if you haven’t been here and are ever anywhere nearby make it a point to get here.

The plane is an A12 an early version of what became the SR71 Blackbird. It was capable of mach 3 (2100 mph) at an altitude over 80,000 feet.







After lunch (and resting tired legs) we went to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens which is only about a mile away from the space center.

They have beautiful gardens and we were just starting thru them when a volunteer in a golf card came by and took pity on two old senior citizens. He gave us a ride and narrated tour of most of the gardens, it was great.

They also have a butterfly building, it is very nice and Diana got lots of pictures, but it is a little hard to see the butterflies.

They have a garden they call the railroad garden. It is a large model railway layout (and larger scale) that was built by two eagle scouts as a scout project. Then all the planting were done and are maintained by the local bonsai club to keep all the plants in scale with the railroad.

For the fall season they have scarecrows thru out the gardens. Diana named these the pot heads.

It was a great day and a nice change of pace from the boat.