Day 103

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Obfuscator writes: We left Savannah a bit later than we had planned, but since we didn't really have anything on our itinerary other than getting to Cape Canaveral, it didn't end up mattering. The drive was moderately annoying, mostly because it's all construction between Savannah and there. It took a few hours, but nothing too unreasonable.

When we got near Cape Canaveral, we stopped at a barbeque place for lunch. It wasn't great, but it was all right for an all you can eat. Following that, we headed out to the Kennedy Space Center, to pick up our tickets. This was relatively trouble free, aside from slow people with bizarre questions in front of us in line.

The launch passes also function as basic tickets to see the Visitors Complex, and they're good for two days. By the time we got there and picked up the tickets, it was already about 3 PM though, so we figured we wouldn't be able to see much in that day, so we saved our two days for Thursday and Friday. Besides, we still needed to get our accommodations figured out, and that's never fun after dark.

Onaxthiel had called ahead and made reservations at a campground in Cape Canaveral, which was by far the closest campground in the area. We had contemplated motels, but everything within about 20 miles was $100 or more, despite any coupons you saw to the contrary. This if because all those coupons say that they're not valid during special events, and around here, a launch definitely qualifies.

We got to our campground, and went to check in. When they asked a seemingly inoccuous question, “You have one tent,” Onaxthiel, not seeing any reason to lie, explained to them that actually we don't have a tent. Apparently this was the wrong thing to tell them, since we were then told that we need to have a tent. Onaxthiel tried to explain that no, in fact we have no need for a tent, and the woman then showed him the park regulations that showed that very clearly, we do. Now, of course we could have gone to a Wal-Mart and bought a tent, but this place was trying to charge us $30/night for a primitive and low-quality tent site to begin with, so we were disinclined, if only on principle, to spending any further on something that we didn't need, just so we could pay them for their poor service and reward their idiocy.

On our way out, we called two more campgrounds in the same county, and found that indeed, they have the same policy./ Since that pretty much covered all the campgrounds in the county that even allowed tents, we decided that it was going to have to be a motel scenario, and it was going to have to be a bit of a drive. It was thus that we ended up with a motel an hour away in Orlando.

The moral of the story is that your options around Cape Canaveral at launch time really suck. Make sure you have an RV or a tent, I guess.

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