Tag Archives: SpaceX

Our Spectacular Winter

April 22, 2023 exploRVistas 18 Comments

November 2022 to April 2023 – Melbourne Beach, Florida – Written by Jim

Some of our readers may have noticed that we haven’t posted all winter. One of them even gave me a gentle nudge, complete with exclamation points! So why the long pause in posting? Truth be told, we were chilling out after our push to get the cabin done, followed by our unplanned RV purchase on the way to Florida. It took us several weeks to get ourselves settled into the new RV, and once we did, we kicked back and enjoyed our spectacular winter.

NASA started off our launch season with a bang by sending up the first Artemis rocket.

Night became day when the mammoth ship headed to space! The unmanned craft performed flawlessly as it flew to the moon and back.

On top of that one NASA launch, we had somewhere in the vicinity of 30 SpaceX launches this year. I was able to work on my photography skills with that many opportunities!

One of my favorites was this streak shot of a Falcon Heavy launch, followed by the two side boosters returning to Cape Canaveral. Unlike a traditional photograph, I set my iPhone on a tripod and, using a remote shutter button, I let the image develop over several minutes. I never know for certain how a photo is going to turn out until the shutter is closed. Some are duds, but some are really cool.

Here is an example of when something cool happens. This is a Falcon 9 that flew through a cloud, which created a gap in the streak. Farther up, the stage separation can be seen, and the descending dash of light is the booster performing an entry burn to land on a ship out in the Atlantic. So you might be wondering what that dotted line is. That is an airplane strobe. The pilot was nowhere near the rocket, but from our vantage point, he lined up perfectly in that gap caused by that cloud. I looked on Flight Radar and got the plane’s tail number and was able to look up the pilot. I sent him the photo and his response was “best photobomb ever!” Air traffic control actually suggested he make that maneuver out over the ocean to view the launch. Pretty fun to be able to chronicle that for him.

Last year, I put up a Launch Day flag to alert our park residents of an upcoming launch. Val and Barb suggested a sign to tell the launch time, and it wasn’t long before Barb found an easel at a garage sale. I put a white board on it last summer and put launch times and other information on it this winter. I received a lot of thanks for doing that. Thank you for the easel, Barb!

Another big part of our winter was our weekly shuffleboard tournaments.

Brenda organized each weeks tourney. She and her husband Jimmy also incorporated a couple of cookouts into the mix. She also awarded medals to the winners of each weeks event, which ended up being a lot of fun!

Here is most of our crew. This was the end of the season, so some folks had already left for home.

Another event was a trip to Summer Crush Winery that Diana organized. We were thrilled that over 40 people drove over an hour each way to Fort Pierce!

A good time was definitely had by all.

Several of our friends made the trip on their motorcycles.

Betty jumped onto Park’s bike so she could send a photo to her grandkids. 🙂

On St. Patrick’s Day, Diana and I met her cousin. Jerry in Lakeland for a Detroit Tigers game against the New York Yankees. We went out to dinner afterwards and then shared an Airbnb that night. The Tigers had a huge lead at the beginning, but the Yankees made a game of it, coming to within one run. The Tigers pulled out the win!

All in all, it was a pretty darned good winter in Melbourne Beach. Our mission to chill out was accomplished! Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Astronomy and Space, Florida

Let’s Do Launch!

March 15, 2022 exploRVistas 10 Comments

Melbourne Beach, Florida – March 15, 2022 – Written by Jim

If there is any one thing that sums up this winter on Florida’s Space Coast, it has been the increased number of launches from previous years. We’ve seen a total of eighteen successful launches and one launch failure so far. There are two more rockets scheduled to head to orbit before we depart Florida. Two of the successes were ULA Atlas V rockets and all of the rest were SpaceX Falcon 9’s. The failure was a tiny 45 foot tall Astra rocket that tumbled out of control after it was out of our view. That ended up in the Atlantic Ocean. It is interesting to note that the first launch we saw this season was a crewed flight, as will be the last one at the end of March.

Normally, people tend to favor seeing the night launches the best.

There is just something special about seeing the changing colors of the exhaust plume as the craft soars overhead.

Oddly enough, our favorite launch of the year occurred in the late afternoon. That one was a SpaceX CSG-2 mission that flew south, just off the coast. It went right by us. The stages separated almost directly above us, with the first stage turning around and flying back to the cape and landing. I had my camera on it the entire flight and caught this video:

The only thing that might have made it better is if had occurred the day before, as originally planned. The skies were even clearer then. Unfortunately, Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas decided to leave Port Canaveral and sail into the Coast Guard exclusion zone, which forced a launch scrub. An investigation is underway on that.

In addition to that video, I set my iPhone on a tripod for that mission and, using the Slow Shutter app, I captured this composite:

This is basically a time exposure. The ascending rocket is the solid line that angles to the right. The interrupted line is the returning booster…with the upper line being the entry (into the atmosphere) burn and the lower line being the landing burn. That is my all time personal favorite! Perhaps had the launch occurred the previous day, this wouldn’t have been so interesting. 😊

So has this season been all launches? Not by a long shot! We were fortunate to see the return of our Canadian friends this year, as the border has reopened between the U.S. and Canada. Our park is much more entertaining when everybody is here! We’ve had twice-weekly shuffleboard tournaments, which is something new this season.

Mark is our line judge; a job he obviously takes seriously.

We’ve had visits from our friends Terry & Diane, Rod & Mary and a contingent of college pals.

Here we are celebrating Jake Jump’s win in Lakeland where he pitched for Fontbonne University. We’ve seen him every year he’s played in Florida. This is his senior year and the end of an era. Dad Jim is taking the photo. We also met up for a rocket launch in Cocoa Beach:

Get your cameras ready. 3…2…1…

…and we have liftoff!

I’ve added a new fixture to our flagpole this year, to let people know when the launches are going to be. It started out as this:

Well, that doesn’t really cover all of the NASA, Blue Origin, ULA and Astra launches that take place, so we updated to this:

I had this flag custom made. That gets the job done! Our neighbors have come to rely on it. 😊

One last thing that is new this winter is my purchase of a new guitar! I haven’t played I probably 25 years, and my old 12-string Guild is in disrepair in our storage room in Michigan. I purchased a Zager 6-string and have started online lessons through Justin Guitar. So much is available online now that wasn’t when I learned back in high school! I was always a strummer and never learned how to pick. That is changing, as I’ve already learned a lot in the month I’ve had it. Our friends Becky and Joe had their musician neighbors Barbara and Jason from Montana visiting here, and Jason asked to borrow my guitar one evening. Here’s a little video of the two of them, with Barbara on her octave mandolin.

My goal is to play like that. Such a light touch!

So that’s about it for now. We are gearing up for a summer’s worth of work on our cabin in Michigan, so stay tuned for that! We are done with subcontractors, so it is Diana and I making it happen from here on out. Lots to do for one summer; hopefully it is complete by the time we head back south! Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Astronomy and Space, Florida, Friends

Autumn in Florida

December 15, 2021 exploRVistas 15 Comments

Melbourne Beach, FL – December 14, 2021 – Written by Jim

Rockets, sunshine and a new Costco…oh my! What more could two people want?

Our fall in Brevard County, Florida has been a combination of walks on the beach, launches from Cape Canaveral, sprucing up our lot at the park and buttoning up paperwork from our summer construction project. We’ve had 4 launches since we got here, three of which we watched from our beach.

First up was a SpaceX Falcon 9 daytime launch of Crew 3. When there are humans on board, we all tend to hold our breath a bit. This is a composite streak shot I took on my iPhone of that mission. This type of photography really works well on the night launches, as you will see on my next photos.

Next up was a SpaceX Falcon 9 night launch.

This mission carried over 50 Starlink satellites into orbit There is a lot going on in this composite, which I will try to explain. The brightest streak is the first stage rising from Cape Canaveral, which ends near the top of the arc. That is MECO, or main engine cutoff. There is a slight gap before the second stage lights and the arc continues. While it appears that the rocket is falling at that point, it is actually continuing to rise over the curve of the globe. Note that I was able to get the entire arc into the frame, as the rocket was flying northeast, which is away from us. The squiggly line to the left is an airplane, as is the swooping line to the right. Both were flying towards us and stayed well outside the restricted airspace. The jumble of light at the bottom of the photo is a group of four people sitting on the beach with flashlights and phones and the couple on the shoreline is Bill and Erin, neighbors of ours from the park.

Next up was an Atlas V launch by United Launch Alliance.

That rocket had 5 solid rocket boosters, which really made it jump off the pad. It flew straight east, which made it impossible to catch it all on my iPhone, even at wide-angle. We watched this flight with friends Becky, Joe and Lynette at 5 in the morning. Shortly after this was taken, we could see the 5 solid boosters fall away, twinkling as they fell towards the ocean. After that, we were treated to a rare spectacle:

This is a photo (not a composite) of the second stage heading over the horizon. It is the yellowish dot near the ocean. Above it is the exhaust plume being lit up by the sunrise. While the sky remains dark for us at 5:15 AM, that rocket is high enough and far enough east to see the rising sun. What a treat that was! Two days after that, there was another Falcon 9 launch that we missed, as it was at 1 AM. Becky, Joe and Lynette saw it, but we couldn’t drag ourselves out of bed. 🙂 We have many more launches coming up, including one from a new company on the Space Coast called Astra. Their first two launches were from Alaska, of all places. NASA is planning on launching their first SLS moon rocket in the spring, so that will hopefully happen while we are here. We also received news that SpaceX is building launch facilities at the cape for Starship, their gigantic rocket that performs a belly flop on its way back down from space.

They are currently conducting those test launches from Texas. Starship will be taller than a Saturn V moon rocket and will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. Exciting times around here, for sure.

News closer to home is that we finally have a working refrigerator in the RV! Our previous gas/electric fridge stopped working on electric about a month after the warranty expired, early last year. The service technician we purchased it from came several times last winter, but was never able to resolve the issue. We attempted to get another gas/electric this past summer from Camping World, but twice it arrived damaged. We finally had them refund our money. When we got to Florida, our friends Brenda and Jim told us that their new fifth wheel came with a 12 volt refrigerator. We had never heard of this type, so we looked them up online. It uses a small compressor, similar to a house fridge. The bonus is that it doesn’t have the large absorption unit on the back, so there are 2 more cubic feet of space inside the unit. It keeps things nice and cold, too! Many thanks to our friend Mark for helping us install it.

Back in Michigan, our cabin is online and letting us know that all is well. We have a wifi thermostat that lets us know what the furnace is doing, along with the current inside and outside temperature. Our wall of windows has been a boon when the sun is out, as the temperature in the house climbs above the set point of the thermostat. Free heat is a good thing! We also have a monitor on the propane tanks, so we know how much we have left. The electric cooperative even has an app that shows us our hourly usage. We’ve been pleased with how efficient the cabin has been so far.

Along with our security system, our friends Lane and Patti are keeping an eye on things up there, as are our neighbors on both sides of us. Hopefully these two will be able to bring their fifth wheel south one of these days and hang out in the sun with us. We sure do miss them!

Another fun thing for us is that our barn now has a Menards SKU number, meaning you can go online, get the plans and build one for yourself!

When we designed it, we used their planner…so the design becomes their property. They did ask if they could use it in their ads, so they must really like it! They also have the materials package listed separately on a different page. Search “Valley Garage” on the Menards.com website.

And there is nothing quite like celebrating the holidays on the Space Coast! We kicked off the season on Thanksgiving by celebrating at Jerry and Linda’s place with several other friends. We also went with friends Bonnie and Fred to check out the lights at Wickham Park.

The display is normally a drive through event, but they open it up to walkers one weekend a season. It is huge! Sure is great to see these two again!

Speaking of decorations:

We are all decked out for another holiday season!

We even got the truck into the act this time. 🙂

And last but not least, we have a new Costco on the Space Coast!

Now…if only we could find room in the fifth wheel for this. 🙂

That’s about it for now. Stay tuned for more launches and other Florida fun before we head back north to resume our building project. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Michigan

Launches Galore

February 19, 2021 exploRVistas 14 Comments

February 2021 – Melbourne Beach, Florida

Written by Jim

If you’ve assumed that we have rocketed off of the face of the Earth, you can rest assured that we have not. We have been hanging out in our winter hideout on the Space Coast of Florida in what can only be described as the oddest winter yet. Several of our neighbors decided to remain home this year, due to the continuing pandemic. The park has a different feel, as a result. We sure do miss seeing our friends! And even though Florida is pretty much ‘open for business’, many of the activities we would normally do (Bingo, weekly lunches, meat shoot at the Moose Lodge, etc.) aren’t happening. We choose not to go into restaurants or indoor venues right now, and our grocery trips are stealth…early and fast.

With that being said, this season has been anything but a bust. SpaceX and ULA (United Launch Alliance) have been busy providing us plenty of free entertainment, and we’ve taken a few drives to see what’s happening in the area. One of those drives was to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Kennedy Space Center. As is usually the case for us, the wildlife provided us a few new gems.

This gator was showing off his two-step shuffle for us.

This Great Egret found a nice shady spot to hang out.

These Roseate Spoonbills were tempting fate hanging out with this large gator. There were quite a few spoonbills, alligators, herons ducks, and a Bald Eagle to be seen that day. We even saw an armadillo, but couldn’t get a photo of it. Always worth the hour drive up there.

As we mentioned, Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station have been busy! Most of the activity has been centered around SpaceX. They have two launch pads at their disposal, and they keep them hopping.

We’ve seen eleven SpaceX missions launched since we’ve arrived on November 1. One of them had four astronauts on board, which adds a whole different dynamic to watching it. We feel the night launches are the prettiest, although the one shown above was pretty cool. It was a polar launch that flew almost directly over our heads! One of the launches landed its booster back at the Cape (which we could see) and it produced two loud sonic booms as it came back in.

In addition to the SpaceX launches, we saw two ULA missions. One was a Delta IV Heavy, which is three boosters strapped together.

That one was not only bright, but very loud.

This particular ULA launch occurred at sunset. It used a single liquid-fueled booster with several solid rocket boosters attached to it that leave a long contrail. The setting sun (out of the picture to the left) really added to the colors of this one.

One day, while running errands, we spotted a SpaceX booster in Port Canaveral when crossing the Cocoa Causeway. We detoured up to the port to check it out.

To the right, the sooty cylinder with the legs on the bottom is Falcon 9 booster #1060.5. The “.5” means it has flown 5 missions. In the foreground is the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which is basically a large barge that the booster lands on in the Atlantic Ocean. “Large” is a relative term, considering the fact that SpaceX parks it off of the coast of North Carolina, launches the rocket 120 miles into space and lands the first stage booster on it. Kind of like looking for a grain of sand in a roomful of thick carpet. Most times the landings are successful, saving the company millions of dollars. Some of the launches don’t require as much fuel to be used, so they are able to reverse the direction on those boosters and land them back at the Cape. Simply amazing.

As most of you know, we are planning on building a cabin on our property in Michigan this summer. That project has been the main focus for us this winter.

It won’t be long before a structure appears on the bare spot of land in the above photo. Having built the barn last summer, we know the drill, as far as permitting and securing our subcontractors goes. As of this point, everything is on schedule. The biggest hurdle has been the tremendous increase in lumber prices. The housing market is booming. As a result, those lumber prices aren’t going down anytime soon…so we bite the bullet and keep moving.

We’ve also been getting ideas watching home improvement shows on HGTV. One of our favorites is Home Town, which is set in Laurel, Mississippi.

Ben and Erin Napier take on a different run-down house in their hometown of Laurel and restore it for the new homeowners during each episode. Their ability as craftspeople to create something from nothing is really fun to watch. We have picked up a few ideas from them to incorporate into our place, also with some new ways to refer to things we already had planned. We already were going to use vinyl plank flooring, but learned that the correct term is LVT…or as they say in Mississippi, “Luxury VAHHHnl TAAAAHhll”. 🙂 Watching these two is much more entertaining than most of the other programming choices these days! Check them out, if you haven’t already done so.

So until next time, here’s to staying healthy and well. Stay tuned for updates on our cabin and, as always…safe and happy travels to all!

Florida, Fulltime RVing, Michigan

A Snowball in Florida?

February 1, 2020 exploRVistas 19 Comments

February 1, 2020 – Melbourne Beach, Florida

Written by Jim

The metaphor of a tiny snowball rolling down a hill and gaining size was a thought that kept going through my head in early January. With the fact that we were on the coast in Florida…at an elevation of 10 feet above sea level and with us in shorts…it was just that; a metaphor. That thought was rooted in my attempted recovery from the most recent bout of whatever crud was going around. It turns out that it had snowballed into a full-blown case of bronchitis. I ended up coughing so hard that I pulled muscles in my back and aggravated my sciatic issues on my left side. I could barely walk, once I mustered the energy to get out of my chair. I was a mess, to put it mildly. On more than one occasion, I thanked God that I had decided against working for UPS this year.

First order of business was to get over the bronchitis. A trip to Surfside Urgent Care netted me several prescriptions, including an inhaler to stop the out-of-control coughing. If you owned stock in Walgreens over that period of time, you are welcome for the upswing in your portfolio. 🙂 The concoction of drugs, coupled with some great nursing from my lovely caregiver Diana, did the trick. By mid month, the snowball had stopped rolling.

The next thing on the agenda was to address the sciatic issue. My leg pain had subsided, but it was replaced with numbness. I contacted my nephew Dr. Dan, who is a physical therapist in Michigan, asking advice on what direction to go in seeking health care. My primary care doctor is in Michigan, and I really wanted to get a jump on this. Dan provided me with a ton of information (Thank you!) and a recommendation to seek out a good physical therapist down here. Florida has a law that allows a person to get 30 days of PT without a physicians referral, so I connected with one that was highly rated and accepted by our insurance. I’m happy to say that after a week and a half, I am making great progress! The snowball is indeed melting.

In Space Coast news, we’ve had three launches so far this year. January 6 saw the launch of Starlink 2, the second operational flight of SpaceX’s constellation of internet-providing satellites. With it being an evening launch that was flying northeast, we knew our best views would be further north of our winter home. We headed up to Patrick Air Force Base, which sits just south of Cape Canaveral.

What a show! What you are seeing in this photo (left to right) is the trail from the main engines, followed by MECO (main engine cut off). The next dot is the second-stage engine start (SES), followed by that portion of the rocket fading off into orbit. At that point, the rocket is outside of the atmosphere, so the flame disappears. Farther to the right, the first re-entry burn from the first stage can be seen, as it slows down to land on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, located several hundred miles out to sea. The final burn wasn’t visible, as it was over the horizon. I guess Earth isn’t flat, after all. :). For a full list of SpaceX acronyms…some of them hilarious… click HERE. BFR is one of my favorites, as is FTBA. 🙂

The next launch was the much anticipated IFA test. IFA stands for In-Flight Abort. NASA will be launching astronauts on SpaceX rockets, and this test was performed to see if the capsule could escape from an exploding rocket. We decided that Patrick AFB was the best spot to view it from, so away we went!

The weather had other plans, as the rocket disappeared into the clouds. We did hear a tremendous BOOM though (that’s not an acronym), as the rocket experienced RSD (rapid scheduled disassembly). Here’s what it looked like on Doppler radar:

The smaller green dot to the right of the explosion is the capsule flying away from the exploding rocket. The flight was a success and we should expect to see astronauts headed to the space station this spring.

The last launch for January was another SpaceX Starlink launch. Having a PT commitment later that morning, we chose to view it from our park:

It never gets old. 🙂

The other entertainment around here is Bingo and the weekly meat shoot at the local Moose lodge. This version involves a deck of cards instead of guns, but the prizes are still sizable cuts of meat. I won some delicious pork chops and Diana scored the 50/50 a few weeks back. It’s always a good time, as a large group of us from the park shows up. The caller refers to us as the Big Table.

We also had lunch with our friends Rod and Mary, we went to Merritt Island with our friend Paul and his Aunt Joan, and we did a Costco run with our full-time RV friend Kathy. This is the fifth state we’ve connected with her in.

And we’ve gained some ground on our garage project. We have all of our subcontractors lined up now and we’ve secured our land use permit. Once we have the building permit in hand, we can begin!

Actually, there is a fair amount of white stuff up on our hill, so we will wait until it melts before we head up there. We don’t want my snowball metaphor to become a reality. 🙂

Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Astronomy and Space, Florida, Fulltime RVing

Things Are Looking Up!

December 21, 2019 exploRVistas 15 Comments

November 1 – December 21, 2019 – Florida’s Space Coast

Written by Jim

With all the people along the Space Coast of Florida looking up at the skies recently, it’s a wonder we haven’t all tripped and fallen over each other. Several launches have occurred since we’ve arrived, along with a unique event that had our eyes on the sky. More on that last one in a bit. We will also fill you in on a few things that have been happening with us lately.

Our first goal when we arrived in Florida was to get our first of two rounds of Shigrix shingles vaccines. That had to be put on hold after Diana and I came down with some pretty nasty colds from our trip south. Those carried on for two weeks and kept us home bound except for one trip to the beach on November 11 to watch SpaceX launch another 60 satellites into their Starlink internet constellation.

I did manage to grab this short video of it peeking through the clouds as it soared over the ocean. After it disappeared into the clouds, we followed suit and vanished from sight into out RV to continue our recovery. And SpaceX recovered their booster, after it landed on the barge Of Course I Still Love You 250 miles off the coast.

Once we felt we were over our colds, we made our way to the pharmacy to get those vaccines. We knew the side effects of them was flu-like symptoms for a day or two, so we weren’t looking forward to that. The pharmacist told me “As quickly as the side effects hit you, they will be equally quick to leave.” He wasn’t kidding. I felt as if I was hit by a truck, as every joint in my body ached until 1 PM the following day. By 1:15, it was gone. Fortunately, Diana had just mild symptoms. We have one more round to go in mid January and then we are (hopefully) protected.

The rest of November had us sprucing up our lot.

The sticker grass invades the plantings each summer, so it is up to us to clean it up. The park owners didn’t plant this landscaping (previous residents did), so they require us to maintain it or they will take it out and let the grass take over. We like the look of the plantings and gladly put in the effort to keep them looking nice. It’s only labor, and the sandy soil is easy to work with.

On December 4, we headed up to Port Canaveral with out friends Bob and Pat to view the next SpaceX launch up close. We were actually a bit too close, as we had a hill blocking our view of the pad. It would’ve been great once the rocket came over the hill, but unfortunately the winds were too high to launch. It did launch the next day, and we viewed it from our beach. This particular mission was a resupply trip to the International Space Station.

This is a frame grab from a failed attempt at a video. I made a rookie mistake and left it on autofocus. Still, not too bad considering the rocket is a good 50 miles away at this point.

Once again, SpaceX recovered their booster, landing 250 miles off of Jacksonville on Of Course I Still Love You. These people are good at what they do.

Our next event was a quick day trip to Lakeland to meet up with fellow RV-Dreamers for a picnic.

What a treat to get together with these folks! The big news this year is that several couples…including Howard and Linda (RV-Dreams founders and owners in the center of this photo)…have transitioned from full-time to part-time status. Many of us have bought houses or property and are establishing roots. The two of us are still officially full-timers for another three years or so, until our heads hit the pillows in our cabin.

And on that home front, we have made some progress on our Northern Michigan property. We have our garage plans drawn and are in the middle of securing permits. Most of our subcontractors have been lined up and we are awaiting quotes from a few more. We feel we are on track to have a completed garage and utilities by the time we head back here next fall.

Following that, we headed to Cocoa Beach with Bonnie and Fred for that unique event we mentioned earlier.

Here are the four of us, ready for the show! And what might that show be that had us looking skyward?

Skydiving Santas! Plane load after plane load full of Santas dropped from the sky and attempted to hit giant inflatable targets on the beach.

This Santa even hitched a ride on his buddy’s parachute on the way down! It was a really fun way to spend the day! Unfortunately for me, I was beginning to come down with yet another cold. Spending the day in breezy conditions probably didn’t help matters. I’m still recovering.

Speaking of recoveries, SpaceX managed the quickest turnaround of a launch facility by sending the JSAT communications satellite on its way on December 16 at 7:10 PM. It flew from Pad 40, which had seen the ISS resupply mission depart just 11 days earlier. Feeling as crummy as I did, I wasn’t thrilled about hanging out on the beach in the cool night air, so I opted for an attempt at a ‘streak shot’ over our Christmas decorated RV. It involves using a tripod, an iPhone, and the Slow Shutter app. Added bonus this time around is that my new iPhone 11 has a wide angle lens available, ensuring more field of vision to catch the rocket’s flame trail.

To say I am pleased with the result is an understatement. From left to right is the first stage trail, main engine cutoff, second stage ignition and the trail until it disappeared from sight. The soft white jumbled blob to the right of our lit up palm trees is our illuminated American flag. That’s the result of the camera overlaying successive photos over each previous image to create the effect. Diana pointed out that it looks like a Christmas angel. 🙂

On Thursday afternoon, after an almost three day voyage from 450 miles offshore, the SpaceX first stage made it back to Port Canaveral.

This is the third time this booster has flown, and it will most likely fly again. Again, SpaceX is good at what they do.

On Friday, December 20, another launch took place. This one was the test flight of the Boeing Starliner, one of the two entries into the Commercial Crew program designed to launch astronauts from American soil again…the other being SpaceX.

With the launch occurring at 6:36 AM, we opted to view it from our corner. This is the view looking north as it disappeared into the clouds. It was clear up at the Cape, so early risers to the north ended up with a great show.

Quick note: As of this writing, the Boeing Starliner experienced a problem and will be returning to Earth early. It is an un-crewed test flight, so no lives are in danger. Stay tuned for updates in our next post. Until then, safe and happy travels to all!

Astronomy and Space, Florida, Fulltime RVing

2019 Spring and Summer Plans

March 9, 2019 exploRVistas 27 Comments

In our last post, we jumped ahead to what we were planning for in September and October of this year with our trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland. After quite a bit of trip routing, we are ready to reveal our spring and summer plans!

Like these pelicans along the shore, we will soon line up with everyone else and fly northward. Once we get to Jacksonville, we are turning westward for a journey to the Grand Canyon and the surrounding area. It will be a very busy slate. Look for a spring full of posts about that trip. We have three months before we have to be back in Michigan to start our volunteer gigs at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We will be there for two months before heading overseas for a month. And after that???

Well, the fact that I installed a flagpole sleeve in the ground at our site in Florida, I guess that’s a pretty good indication of where we will be next winter! We’ve really come to love it here. Good friends, good weather and…

eZy Watermark_02-03-2019_06-39-42AM

…rocket launches! This particular launch was the Crew Dragon demonstration mission that SpaceX sent to the International Space Station last week. The capsule safely returned on Friday about 200 miles off the coast. Future splashdowns will be within 25 miles of shore, so we should be able to get some photos of them parachuting down.

And an update on our genealogy work: Diana is finding a plethora of information on her roots that will ensure that we have plenty of places to visit when we get overseas. She has been able to go way, way back in her lineage. On my search, I’m currently working between my sixth and tenth great grandparents on my dad’s side. To let you know how involved that is, every one of us have 256 sixth great-grandparents. By the time you get to your tenth great-grandparents, that number balloons to 4096 people! Thanks to the Catholic church records in Canada, there is a record of most every one of mine. And I know that there are several hints waiting to take me beyond that level. Time will tell what I find on my mom’s German side.

We’ve also found time to have fun with our friends in the area.

We checked out the St Katherine’s Greek Festival one day with Fred and Bonnie. It was fun to see the dancers doing traditional Greek dances in their costumes.

We also met our friends Jim and Sue, who were down from Alton, Illinois to see their son Jake pitch for Fontbonne University.

He didn’t end up pitching that afternoon, but he did start today. He got the win, and the team is 10-0 on the year so far.

The four of us rented a nice home on Airbnb which worked out extremely well. What a great time!

So as our time winds down for the year in Melbourne Beach, be sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming posts as we head west. Until next time, safe and happy travels to all!

Family, Florida, Friends

Rockets and Red Cars

February 13, 2018 exploRVistas 31 Comments

This season is shaping up to be the winter of rockets and red cars for us. Living on the Space Coast of Florida, we’ve been fortunate to see several launches this winter, as SpaceX and United Launch Alliance have been very busy. As you probably have seen by now, the biggest rocket contained a red Tesla roadster. While that was beyond cool, it wasn’t the only red vehicle launch for us. More on that in a bit…

On January 29th, our friends Phyllis and Bernie came up from Fort Pierce for a visit.

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Diana and Phyllis worked together back in West Michigan. They checked out our park and then we went to Sebastian Beach Inn for a late lunch. It was great to see them again!

On January 31, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a communications satellite.

The mission required a full thrust to a high orbit, so the booster wasn’t able to return to the Cape. I was fortunate to get our Nikon focused enough to get this shot as the spacecraft flew by us. This is zoomed all the way, plus cropped to make it even bigger.

A mere 7 days later, SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy rocket for the very first time. Luckily, this coincided with a visit by my sister Judy and her hubby Dale!

It was a perfect day for a show!

There were a lot of people watching up and down the beach.

And it’s liftoff, as viewed from Melbourne Beach! The Cape is just far enough away that it’s over the horizon.

This is my best photo of it. We were viewing it from the side, so it’s hard to see the side boosters. There is a Tesla in that nose cone! We did see the boosters separate, then fire side-by-side to begin their return to the Cape. A minute or so later, they relit and landed in almost perfect unison.

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My cousin Mary was much closer up at Cocoa Beach and posted this photo on Facebook of the boosters coming in. Beyond cool!

After the launch, the four of us went to dinner at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.

What a fun day!

So what else have we been doing? Well, between substitute teaching assignments, Diana and I decided to go for a drive in Edsel the Escape yesterday up to Jacksonville.

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Before Edsel knew what happened, his license plate was off and Diana was shaking hands with William the car salesman. Meet Edsel 2 on the left, our new 2018 Ford Escape! Now all we need to do is to make sure Elon Musk doesn’t launch it into space. 🙂

We’ve also been planning our summer trip, which we will talk about in a future post. It’s also maintenance season for our rig and vehicles….uhhhh, well one vehicle. We sort of took care of any maintenance that needed to be done on the Escape!

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The biggest job of all is waxing the fifth wheel. It takes me a few weeks to complete the job, as I only tackle a section each morning. That strategy to be much easier on my body than trying to knock it out in a couple of days. And that leaves the afternoons free for the beach and the next rocket launch!

Florida

Happy Holidays!

December 25, 2017 exploRVistas 22 Comments

It is that time of year when many of us celebrate the holidays with our loved ones! Here in the United States, the season focuses mostly on Christmas…but let’s not forget that many of us have other traditions. On my rounds through the neighborhoods delivering packages for UPS, I’ve also noticed several Happy Hanukkah signs. Still others celebrate Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year, St. Lucia Day, and Omisoka this time of year.

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Most of them involve gifts! The streets are filled with not only our UPS golf carts, but also FedEx and USPS trucks. I was even surprised to see a plain white cargo van pull up to a house filled to the roof with Amazon boxes! I found out later that Amazon is delivering some (but not all) of their packages themselves. With that said, here’s a quick update on the delivery gig: Since our last post, the routes have pretty much been covered with employees who chose to stick with the job. That’s a good thing, as it meant I was able to work just at my pod and help out on the pod next to mine. The amount of packages settled down until the Wednesday before Christmas, when things ramped up. This last Friday was my busiest day, with 149 stops and 197 packages delivered. That happened in 7 hours and 22 minutes (including sorting and loading) for an average of one package every two-and-a-half minutes! The step count on my Fitbit came in at a little over 15,000 steps that day. Several of those stops involved adult signatures, as wine is a popular thing to ship this time of year. The very next day…Saturday…the volume dropped way off.

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I covered BOTH pods in one load. But while it doesn’t seem like much, it represents 38 very happy households who were able to get their last minute gifts in time for their celebrations. Notice that someone even shipped Graeter’s ice cream from Ohio! It was rock-solid, so it must work to do that. I will be providing a wrap-up of the job, once it ends in mid-January…so be sure to stay tuned.

Lots of other things have been happening in our area! On December 9th, we got together for dinner with our friends Bob and Pat from Michigan Traveler.

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They were staying at Wickham Park for a few weeks, and are ultimately hoping to head for their spot in the Keys…which is still in recovery mode from Hurricane Irma. It was great to see them again!

We also had an unexpected visit from our friends Dave and Lois from Wild Cherry. Unfortunately, their visit was rushed, as they were travelling with their dog Darby. Within two minutes of them arriving, the park owner rolled up on his golf cart to remind us of the ‘no pet’ rule in the park. It’s the only rule in our annual Letter of Intent that is in bold type, so he’s adamant about it. As animal lovers, it’s not our favorite thing…but the park works well for us otherwise. As we said, we would love for people to stop by and visit; just remember that the puppies and kitties have to stay home. 😦

This past week has also seen many of the park residents head back north for the holidays. It’s a little quiet around here. They will all be back next week, plus many more. The park should be hopping soon!

Diana and I saw another SpaceX launch. She was at our park and I was loading up my golf cart at the time.

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My pod is a little over 10 miles from the launch pad. The exhaust flames were clearly visible going up, followed by the low rumble of the rocket several seconds later. The entire scene was played back in reverse a couple minutes later, as the first stage descended back to the Cape and landed upright on an adjacent landing pad. Absolutely amazing to be able to see that. SpaceX is hoping to launch their Falcon Heavy for the first time in January, which is three of these rockets strapped together. The payload will be Elon Musk’s personal red Tesla, which will hopefully end up in the same orbit around the sun as Mars. A red roadster and a red planet. We are hoping to get tickets for that launch, so we will be sure to let you know how that goes!

And Christmas in Florida wouldn’t be complete without Surfing Santas!

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Once again, Cocoa Beach was packed with elves on surfboards on Christmas Eve!

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Thousands of people were there to have a good time, listen to various bands and watch the hula dancers. Even though the ocean was flat, an occasional wave would come in to provide some surfing entertainment.

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With that, Diana and I wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year, Boxing Day, Festivus, or whatever you may celebrate. Stay safe and enjoy!