It’s a beautiful day in Ponce Inlet on the deck at my mom’s house. Captain hubby unfortunately had a photo shoot in Orlando this evening so we didn’t take Adios out to watch the 5:02 pm launch of space shuttle Discovery. My mom invited me down to watch the launch from her deck - it’s a front row seat! (she even fed me :-))

Look! There - in the sky just above the shrubs - a glimmer of the massive fireball that propels the shuttle into space. We live just about 2 hours north of Cape Canaveral and we get such an amazing view of the launches. I try never to miss one. As many as I’ve seen, they still take my breath away. I even cried once years ago when we were on our boat almost to the Cape and were close enough to see the shuttle on the pad, hear the roar and feel the rumble in our chests as she lifted off.

And there she goes…shortly after I snapped this we saw the SRBs fall away (solid rocket boosters; so no more fire) and you could see the speck of the shuttle under her own power leaving the atmosphere and the even tinier specks of the SRBs falling to the ocean many miles away - you usually lose sight of them well before they reach the water. Then, minutes later you hear the rumbles of the sonic boom rolling across the water. It really is an awesome thing to experience.

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