Day 3-6 all quiet

With nothing to chase the past few days have been spent seeing what's on the ground and what's been to the stars rather than what's happening in the skies immediately over our heads! Day 3 was spent at Todd's house near Corpus Christi and after a slow start to the day we headed to the beach and enjoyed the afternoon sun, and the evening tucking into Mexican food, and Texan beer!

The following day we headed out to Huston and spent the afternoon watching a baseball game between the Huston Astros and the Texas Ranges, from Dallas. It was a convincing win for the Rangers, but a pleasant afternoon, and by the end of the game I think I was starting to get a rough idea as to what was going on!

Minute Maid Park, home of the Huston Astros

After spending the night at Chris' parents home, we headed over to Galveston Island, finding out a little bit about the towns history, especially the impact of a big hurricane in 1900 (well what else would you expect a bunch of weather geeks to do), and enjoying the local sea food, which was excellent, all washed down with the local beer, Shinner.

Yesterday we started to make our way back to Dallas so that we could meet the two Hannah's this evening. On the way we passed through Huston, so made a stop at the NASA Space Centre. 

Huston Mission Control, used for all the Apollo Missions and the early Space Shuttle Flights (up until 1992). The ISS Mission Control Centre is directly on the floor below.

A mock up of the ISS, used for training and troubleshooting

Space vehicle development part of the Orion Program, NASA's future manned space programme.

The Saturn V rocket, scheduled for use on the Apollo 18 mission. The mission was later scrapped due to budget cuts.

After a night spent in Dallas we said goodbye to the two Chris', who are flying back to the UK today. The weather over the next few days seems to be improving, the weekend especially looks like it could be quite promising, with good conditions likely to continue into next week. Typically I fly out of the plains to Boston on Sunday! I guess it's the fickle nature of the weather that's part of the fascination, and hopefully the next few days should be good enough to make up for it!