It’s currently 2:30AM. The only reason I’d be up this early, is if I’m going flying… Let’s head to the airport.

IAD To DEN

Back again at Dulles. This time, I’m not going to Denver… Okay, I am, but I’m catching a connection to Dallas. The plan, to get picked up by some family who left three days before I did.

The only downside to getting to the airport at early AM, is that nothing is open. Dulles doesn’t have that many vending machines. I did find one in the foot tunnel that links the main building to A and B.

With a quick snack, it’s off to Denver, I want to give something a shot there.

DEN To DAL

After a 40min delay due to maintenance issues, I’ve landed in Denver. My first order of business, hit the outdoor observation decks. Why? Because, I have a new camera, and I want some plane pics.

Unfortunately, the angles at the decks weren’t very good. So I didn’t get any good plane pics. So, I just took one of the plane hanging inside.

With that out of the way, it was off to Dalles. I have a museum to hit.

Space Center Houston

Now you might be asking “Why Dalles? That heading says Houston!”. It’s simple really. I’m staying about half way between Dallas and Houston with some family. With the others driving¹, and passing through Dallas anyways, it was just easier.

But enough about that, on to the museum.

To simply put, this place is amazing. As you pull up, you’re greeted by a Falcon 9, and a mockup Shuttle, on a real 747 Shuttle carrier.

These were some of the first things we hit. You get to go inside both the fake shuttle, and the 747. After that, we went over to the Falcon 9. Not letting the opportunity pass me by, I took off my camera bag, handed off my camera, and went for it. After a quick jump, I have touched a Falcon 9.

After that newly added and completed bucket list item. We went back inside. The Texas heat is real.

Back inside, we looked around a little, and found some real moon rocks.

Next we headed to the tram, that would take us to the small rocket garden. They had a few things there, like an F1 engine. This is the engine that was used on the Saturn V.

Speaking of the Saturn V, that was next. Going inside the hanger was a real, flight certified Saturn V.

It is unbelievably big. Far bigger than I could easily capture with my camera. So I went the other route. Most people there were taking plenty of pics with their phones. But I brought my 75-300mm lens, for those sweet close ups.

After that, we got in line for the main attraction. We had tickets to go to the “Lunar cathedral”, aka the Apollo mission control center. Not a recreation, the real one.

After another tram ride, and listening to all of the things we couldn’t do, as we were entering a secure federal compound, we were there. At a long staircase. After the climb, we were there. We entered the fully restored press room, and looked down upon the control room.

This was an absolute bucket list item for me. Though we didn’t get to go onto the control room floor. That’s only for the $200 VIP tour… New bucket list item.

I took a ton of photos here, over 130. My Mac wasn’t happy with light room classic denoising them all². I’ll have all the others on my Flickr at some point. But with the museum over, it’s time to head back home.

DAL To DEN

Arriving at DAL, my first order of business was to check a bag. Then it was off to security.

With CLEAR and PreCheck, I was in. Now I just get to wait.

I grabbed a snack from a Hudson nonstop, the whole “just walk out” thing is cool and all, but it’s computationally heavy. While I was trying to decide what chips I wanted, Flighty kept telling me that my flight was getting more and more delayed.

With time to kill, I asked light room classic to export all of the raw photos from the museum, so I can upload them to Flickr. I only have 23Mb/s up on the airport WiFi, so this is going to take a bit.

Welp, that didn’t work. Shortly after starting the Flickr upload, I got kicked off the WiFi. And it wouldn’t let me rejoin. So I’m trying over LTE, good thing I have unlimited data.

After uploading the photos, I headed off for my gate, took some plane pics, and boarded. Time to go to Denver.

DEN -> IAD

Denver is an interesting airport. There are a number of conspiracy theories involving the place. But I’m not interested in that at the moment, I want food. My target, Shake Shack.

The rush for Shake Shack was real, as I had a short connection. I headed down to the train, getting off at B. Taking the elevator up to the third floor, I placed my order. After being handed my food, I rushed back to the train.

I managed to get back to my gate with time to spare. Plenty of time to eat. With that over, it’s time to go home.

IAD

After some rough weather, and some laughs with the flight attendants, I’m back at IAD.

After picking up my bag, and grabbing a snack, I headed for the bus. It was time to to find my car.

Thoughts

Over all, the museum was fantastic. A little heavy on pushing the SLS³, but that’s NASA right now. I’m definitely going to back at some point. I really want to take that VIP tour, and go on the Apollo control room floor.

When I go back, I’ll definitely fly directly into Houston. That’s a lot easier than the crazy plan with this trip. Houston also has the only Disney people mover that was installed outside of the parks. If you know me, I want to see that as well.