Texas

It was now May and I was on my way to Houston. There is not a national park in Houston, but friends and an international airport. And on the way to Houston, in Fort Worth, are more friends :). Looking back, it seems I didn't take very many pictures :(. 

I got to Fort Worth on a Tuesday night I believe and met Sean and Sara at their house. Their son, Liam, had music class that night. We packed into the car and headed out. On the way they popped in the cd of songs the class had been learning. OH MY GOSH! I knew the songs (sort of)! Julie's boys had been in the same music class back in Peoria and we listened to the cd a few times on our weekend road trip. Such a small world sometimes :). The class was the last one, so it was more of a big sing along party with all ages of kids. It was fun to watch them smile, sing and be goofballs :). We had dinner together at a great place near their house and caught up a little before bed. The next morning they were off for work and I headed to Houston to catch a flight. 

The flight was to Romania where I met another set of friends to do some hiking and sightseeing. More on that in a separate post. 

I was gone for about a week and got back into Houston to see Joan and Jonathan, friends who work for my old company and moved to Singapore the last bit of my time there. They showed me some good places to eat and we caught up on Singapore and life after Singapore. They are experiencing/feeling all the same things I did when I got back. I wanted to see if they had any answers and vice versa :). They were newly engaged though (newly since I last saw them), so we had that to celebrate!

They suggested I visit the space center in Houston because it was raining a lot during the day. At first I blanked on a space center thinking that is in Florida. Duh....'Houston we have a problem'. So I visited there and it was interesting. I did manage to take some pics there. 

The shuttle gets transported in style ;). 

Some Longhorns in the field next to campus, technically maybe on campus.

The control room as it was for Apollo 13. They were doing some sort of filming in there that day. The real control room/command center is somewhere else. They communicate with the shuttle in Houston. Florida only does the launch and then hands it over to Houston. 

(See below)

This lady talked to us about the Mars Rover and what it's doing and how it's used. It was pretty cool. I think you can go online and watch it. So much thought and genius went into building it. Pretty amazing. 

Then, I started off for southwest Texas towards my first national park of 2015!