February Travel

We're experimenting with embedding material in a post, so we'll backtrack a bit.  Ann and I flew to Florida in February for the last launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery.  Leaving a vicious beast at home to defend the castle,

we had a series of weather transitions along the way.

The picture above is about 8 miles from the launch pad.  The water and docks you see in the foreground are actually from a small marina located just north of Kennedy point (that's the trees on the right), but it was also the best location for a front row seat.  I've attached a short video of the launch taken from Kennedy Point.  It is absolutely amazing how fast 4.5 million pounds leaps off the pad.  Just a hair better than our Cessna.



We got a new camera for traveling - a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ40, what is called a super-zoom.  It comes with a huge 24X optical zoom which was key to our purchase.  A photography smart nephew (well, technically a nephew - he's as old as we are) gave us the tip.  He said optical is much more powerful then digital zoom where you just get more pixels and basically crop in for a larger picture.  The problem with the latter is you just get bigger pixels and the picture gets progressively fuzzier as you enlarge.  Optical is better. 

The camera also came with auto-stabilization, auto focus, auto setting, and a video capability.  Pretty much the perfect camera for me; if its a good shot its superior skill, and bad shots are the software's fault.  Even though there was a little shake in the video, all these features made it a pretty smooth shot.

We also visited friends in Naples FL and Perry GA, and spent a few days at Ft Myer's Lani Kai Beachfront Resort.  We parked the rental car the day we got there and didn't touch it again until we left.  We had forgotten about spring break, however, so this was just a tad more entertaining than we had planned.  Still, the beach was excellent and the live music from early morning to late at night was not all that bad -- loud, but not bad.

Eventually we had to return home to feed the beast and when we did, we had some shoveling to do.  All in all, though, it was a pretty good trip all the way around, and the view at home was not without a certain appeal.

Well that seemed to work out pretty well as grand experiments go.  We won't always be posting travelogs, but as we find the occasional noteworthy image or video, we'll include it here.