Cocoa Village, FL - 5/16/11

Monday Morning at 8:56 a.m. the final liftoff of the shuttle Endeavour happened. Our position at Cocoa Village Marina was approximately 10 miles from the launch pad and provided a very neat place to observe it.

By the time we saw this the roar of the liftoff hit us. It was nothing but awesome ... so loud!

After the event of the day, I walked across the street to the bank and when I returned Ricki had received a phone call from Huen who was walking the dog that manatees were in the marina and she was gone. Manatees or dolphins ... it doesn't matter ... she wants to see and photograph.

We could see the manatees under the water just floating around. After awhile, Doc got away from Huen and went swimming which caused the manatees to go a little further out in the harbor.

For those that have never been to the ocean, this is a horse shoe crab.

It was one ugly and stinky thing. After all this excitement, we went to Sam's to pick up our pictures that we had developed .... 2,290 since 10/10! This is going to be a big job getting them in the albums. Shortly after 5 p.m. our repaired canvas came back and was installed then we all took off to Port Canaveral for dinner.

The restaurant had a neat tikki bar where you wait on your table.

Our view for dinner out over the AICW.

Dessert was on Quest to honor Skip and Barb's 13th anniversary.

Looks like we are going to stay here until Wednesday then head toward Daytona Beach. Our lazy way of traveling up the east coast has paid off and looks like it will continue. We have seen the space shuttle that some of our friends rushed up here earlier to see and now we have great weather when the east coast is nothing but rain. Everything happens for a reason.