Day 6 - Rob/Eleanor

Woke up early, cooked some misshapen waffles which Eleanor protested to be Texas for the whole day (and later by photographic evidence found Dad guilty of disbelief and excusing me of also potentially believing in Jesus apparition toast!) 

Hit the road for a long stretch down I10 and then 45 in and through the big downtown of Houston, and into NASAs Manned Spaceflight HQ- the Johnson Space Centre. We had time for a coffee in a fairly Disneyfied kid-friendly space exhibit and then left with 10 others on a 'behind the scenes' tour of JSC. 

Had lunch at the staff cafeteria. Nice big buffet salad, Then plenty of time watching the space station control room and a pretty cool Q and A with a fairly young guy who as the altitude controller effectively flies the space station. Then some time in the Apollo era control room which is a national monument now and the SPECTACTULAR Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory which is a very deep and wide swimming pool with great big sections of full scale space station assemblies. There astronauts float and scuba divers assist in training for weightless space walking and maintaining the space station. There were two astronauts in the pool while we visited, and we could operate high res pan tilt zoom underwater cameras to watch them.

Then back to the tourist attraction and a blast through the gift shop and out. 

We took a drive round El Lago and Taylor Lake which were leafy housing developments next to JSC where the Gemini & Apollo wives and kids waited and grew up while father astronauts were at work training and sometimes in space. 

Then we found the motel du jour at Seabrook and went out to dinner at Kemah Boardwalk. a lovely dinner at seafood restaurant Landry's and a tame stroll past all the fairground rides.