05.17.11
Leaving Florida Tomorrow Morning
Today I watch the sun rise over Daytona Beach, and then had breakfast at an all-you-can-eat pancake restaurant (Old Spanish Sugar Mill). You grill your own pancakes! They were very good, and I had blueberries in mine. 🙂 That was in De Leon Springs State Park.
I walked around the park a little bit, and then later went back to Daytona for an “all-access” tour of Daytona International Speedway. I’m not into NASCAR, but I was still quite impressed. Our tour guide drove our tram all the way around the 2.5-mile track, and we even got to stop and walk up the steeply-sloped track at the start/finish line. We stopped at pit road and walked through victory lane, and got a tour of everything in the infield (which is very large!). We saw a few race cars in garages in the infield as well. Finally we went up the Sprint Tower to the press box, from which we had a great view of the racetrack and part of Daytona. We could even see the Atlantic Ocean in the distance, as well as Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, 18 miles away!
I took a lot of photos, and not to sound like a broken record lately, but I will post some later (might even be a couple months ’til things slow down a bit more, but hopefully not that long!). 🙂
I fly out of Orlando early tomorrow morning. Once again I had a great time. The previous trip felt more like a vacation, as it was longer, I saw more stuff, and I wasn’t getting up before the sun every day. But this trip was more closely centered around the RSS retraction and ultimately the launch, which was absolutely fantastic!!!