Greg Berthume’s Blog

Sorry it’s taking me so long to post the results of our trip to Florida (J.Jay and I). I had some work related things that had to be dealt with so I’ve been swamped.

We had a great time in Florida. We went to the Kennedy Space Center for homeschool day and learned a ton about NASA both past and present. I’ve been there a couple of times but this was J.Jay’s first time and he was like a kid in a candy store. He was fascinated by all the technology to say the least, as was I. We are both technology junkies. Anything to keep the brains stimulated. Without stimulation, our brains can’t develop to their full potential.

We got to meet and hear an astronaut speak for 30 mins. Jack (forget last name but he’s one of the older astronauts) lived on SkyLab and was a an early space shuttle commander.

Jack mentioned that on the earlier space flights they had to collect their human waste so that they could study it to see how the human body metabolizes food in space. The toilet was mounted to the wall and they had to collect it in Ziploc bags. To see what they were doing there was a mirror mounted on the wall. They called it the “rear view mirror”. Everybody thought that was funny.

We learned that the astronauts that ultimately travel to Mars will be the kids that are 5-15 years old today. J.Jay is 10 so who knows, maybe he’ll end up living on Mars one day! It’s a 6 month flight one way to get there. NASA is mainly going back to the moon to learn how to live for long periods in space. They will need to grow food and produce water and oxygen to survive. It all sounds very complex and costly. It’s worth the expense though. I don’t think the average American realizes how many inventions and technology breakthroughs have come from the challenges that NASA faces every day with solving problems to accomplish their mission. Diapers came from NASA just to name one.

We visited the Astronaut Museum which was fascinating. There were several simulators. J.Jay got to experience 4Gs. I declined the ride after I found out it had barf bags. I just don’t do well spinning around and getting dizzy. Plus I had just had a large milkshake so it didn’t seem prudent to try it. I did go on the Mars simulator though and that was bearable. That wasn’t very impressive.

After a couple of days camping in Titusville and learning about NASA, we dropped further down to my mom’s house in Lake Worth and had a nice visit with her and my grandfather who arrived the same time from Michigan with his wife. He’s in his mid 80’s so it was nice to have 4 generations together which is a rarity since my family is all over the place. He’s doing very well but we never know how much time we have with our grandparents so we need to charish the time spent with them and allow our kids the opportunity to get to know them better.

We went to Butterfly World in Coconut Creek. Very cool! Tons of colorful butterflies, moths, birds, fish, insect museum and a great gift shop. J.Jay had a bird land on his head where it promptly peed on him. It was quite funny and was captured on video. There is a great virtual tour at the website and I will be posting some pictures I took in the CONNECT! Homeschooling Pictures section. www.butterflyworld.com

While packing up our van to head off to find another campground, a 4′ black snake slithered up into the body of the van (not in but under). We never saw the snake again but needless to say that for the first few miles as we drove away we were nervous that he got in the van somehow. He probably just fell off as we drove away.

We spent a couple of hours in Palm Beach visiting my mom. She works in the ladies shoe department at Saks 5th Avenue on world famous Worth Avenue. She likes it because she’s off 4 months every summer because the wealthy Palm Beachers aren’t there during the summer. Too hot and humid! Plus those nasty hurricanes are lurking about, more so in recent years. She travels throughout Europe and spends time at her vacation home in the NC mountains near Linville Falls.

We spent a couple of hours on the beach which has been newly renovated in recent years with new sand and life guards. Very nice. There’s a lot of new growth in southeast Florida but too crowded, expensive and hot for me. Been there done that. We are happy to be back in Greenville, SC after our 6 year, 6 move, 4 state extended fieldtrip! This has got to be the best place to live all things considered in the eastern US. I took Greenville for granted when we lived here before. I know appreciate it more and have learned that the grass isn’t always greener elsewhere.

I wanted to go spend some time on the gulf side of Florida but we ended up at the award winning Kissimmee State Park near Orlando. It’s a very nice state park. Saw many birds, deer, alligators and armadillos visited our campsite every night. Will post pictures soon. We fished and although didn’t catch any I did manage to inadvertently hook a 4′ alligator. He was lurking about and came up on my bobber and tried to eat it. He (she?) took it down deep. I believe the hook got his/her face. I slowly reeled the gator to the surface where it promptly rolled on the line a couple of times and it snapped. Got the bobber back but I believe the hook is embedded in his face. He popped back up about 50′ away and seemed just fine. That was an interesting experience! I probably should have made more of an effort to keep the line further away but oh well, live and learn. J.Jay got a kick out of it. Now he can tell his future kids about it and turn it into a tall tale “my dad hooked a 12 foot gator and it wouldn’t let go so he jumped in and wrestled it into submission and then retrieved the hook!”

We had lots of fun watching movies in the tent at night on my notebook PC. I brought some old Little House on the Prairie and Walton’s DVDs. We watched “The Right Stuff”, the old 80’s movie about the original 7 Mercury astronauts. That was enjoyable considering the theme of the trip was NASA and rockets to space. I had never seen the movie.

Well this was our trip in a nutshell. J.Jay and I had a great father/son bonding experience. I hope he realizes some day just how special and rare a 7 day camping adventure with dad is!

I hope to have some of our “cool” pictures posted by the end of this weekend.

Stay tuned and God Bless!

Greg

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 7:48 am and is filed under Homeschooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.