Houston, Texas

It's Friday evening and we are currently in Corpus Christi.  We leave tomorrow for San Antonio.  But first, I need to update the blog!

Last Friday we drove from rural Louisiana to the bright lights and big city of Houston!  We left Lafayette and drove west on I-10 through miles and miles of rice fields.  We didn't see rice growing, since it's winter, but we could see that the fields were split into sections and surrounded by small levees, for flooding.  We crossed the state line into Texas, the Lone Star State.  Matthew had to get a hands-on experience at the visitor's center.

It was a rather long drive, and it seems that driving the RV, towing the jeep is longer and more tiring than normal car driving.  It seems that it takes 30 min to get gas - you have to find a place large enough for the rig and then it takes a long time to put in 40 gallons or so.  And sometimes a pump cuts off at $100.  That seems like enough money for gas, but the tank may still not be full, so a second transaction is needed on the credit card.

At any rate, we were happy to be in Texas.  But when we finally got to the outskirts of Houston it was getting dark.  It was impressive to cross the San Jacinto River, about 10 miles east of the city shortly after sun set and see the horizon filled with the lights of Houston.  It is the third or fourth largest city in the US and so its lights are quite impressive.  But I wish we had arrived earlier!  Driving on the expressways with our rig was nerve-wracking.  We were there to see Beth's brother Kevin.  We called him while we were driving and he "talked us down" for about 30 minutes, to find his home in Tomball, about 10 miles north west of Houston.  It was great to finally arrive and have some good Tex-Mex food with Kevin and his wife Judy.

On Saturday we drove north to see Judy's father's farm.  This is a cattle ranch of about 800 acres and 250 cattle. Here are some random images.

Here is Matthew with Kevin and Judy's dog Aggie (named for Texas A and M University).

Beth and brother Kevin.

Kevin, Judy, and some random strangers.

On Sunday we went to Kevin and Judy's church.  Their son Jameson was home from college and played with the band for the contemporary service.  He's wearing a black shirt.

They had a visiting missionary who gave very moving stories about her work with a hospital in Africa.  After church in Texas it's a custom to eat chicken-fried steak so we went to a local spot in Tomball with delicious food.

On Monday we visited Johnson Space Center, on the south-east side of the city.  This is where astronauts have training since the start of the US space program. It also houses Mission Control.  Here is the command center for all the Apollo moon flights.

This was also used with the International Space Center and the big map in the center was tracking the location of the ISS.  The room is empty because a new one has been built and this one is now used as a backup.

We also had a tour of some of the facilities at the space center. There was one huge building that has full-size mock-ups of space equipment that is used for training.

This place was deserted, too, but it was because we were touring at lunch time!

After this we visited "Rocket Park," which has some of the rockets used in space and moon flights.  In this picture, Matthew is standing by one of the rocket nozzles from the Saturn V, the rocket used for the Apollo moon flights.  The first stage had 5 of these.

This is Matthew next to one of the spare Saturn V rockets that was never used.

Matthew's favorite part of the trip was the flight simulator in the visitor's center.  This would respond to his controls and even rotate 360 degrees!  The black and white picture is a shot of the monitor based on a camera in the simulator.  I think he was upside down at this point.  You can see that the empty seat built next to him is flying in the air (actually, dangling down).

Of course Bill also had to get in the act. This was some exercise in performing tasks while gliding around on a friction-less sled, to simulate weightlessness.

And here's future astronaut Matthew!

All systems A-OKAY!

We left Houston on Tuesday for Corpus Cristi, but that's another blog.