The CA ScienCenter and the Space Shuttle Endeavour

We were so excited for the next day.
We were off to LA to visit the California ScienCenter with the Kovar side of the family.
And the best attraction of all was to be the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
A real live, space travelled shuttle.
And the best part?
It was totally free.

We arrived at the center with Andy's dad before his sister's family.
So we ate some lunch and then headed outside into the rose gardens.

It was very hot for us North-westerners that day, and very bright.

So after an hour or so in the gardens, we headed back into the Science Center and started to look at the exhibits.

We really enjoyed all of the space program exhibits as we inched closer to the shuttle line.

And then Kristina and the rest of the Bowers were there and we headed into the exhibit for the Endeavour.

The exhibit is pretty amazing.  I believe that they were in the process of arranging everything,

Because our path zig zagged around the museum quite a bit,

But what a great display of the shuttle program.

I was particularly fascinated with the detailing of the shuttle's trip to the center.

After it was flown to LA, they had to drive it through the streets.

Can you imagine seeing that coming down the road?

Well, maybe some of you saw it.

Thanks to the miracle of information that Facebook is,

I remember seeing many pictures and stories of its journey that day.

We watched a short stop action film that showed the shuttle's entire journey.

And then, before we knew it, we were in the hangar.
There are very few things I have seen in my life that have had a presence so powerful that it is reverent.
This shuttle was awe-inspiring,
Jaw-dropping,
Overwhelming,
Beautiful,
Well worn,
And respectable.
And though there were so many people walking under and around the giant space shuttle,
There was a reverence about the place.

I don't know how long we were in there.
Maybe an hour?
Two?
I could have stayed there all day.
Just look at how big it is.
And thinking about the missions it had completed,
The people that had made it safely out of our atmosphere and back,
On this shuttle that was within my reach.
This giant shuttle that fit all of us Kovars under one relatively small piece of a wing.
Where we stood for a picture, staring straight at a giant American flag on the back wall.
It was just... powerful.

But what made it more powerful to me,
Were the plaques hanging on the walls surrounding the shuttle.
One plaque for each of the missions completed during the American space shuttle program.
They each hung, proudly detailing the missions in brilliant blues.
Except for two that hung in grayscale.

I was walking along the wall,
Pushing a sleeping Macie that had just finished her bottle,
Reading each of the plaques carefully,
When I came upon the first gray story.
The Challenger mission of 1986.
I stopped cold, as I remembered that day.
I was in fourth grade.
The build up for the Challenger mission had been strong in schools.
This was the mission that was sending a teacher into space.
And this was a time that I still imagined I might be an astronaut one day,
(Before I knew how much I cannot handle heights or the feeling of falling.)
We were all sitting, three classes in one room, on the floor in front of a television.
We were excited.
And then there was smoke.
And all those brave people, those heroes, were gone.

Charlie wandered over next to me,
And in a rare moment of attentive listening,
I told him the Challenger story,
And I answered some of his confused questions,
And shared with him how special those heroes were.
And then we walked through the rest until we found the other gray plaque.

What a great success the Space Shuttle program was.
Out of so many missions, only two fell.
But it's those two that stand as reminders of the danger that pioneering science really is.
And the bravery of all of the heroes that travelled inside of those shuttles.
It makes me proud to be an American.

I am sad that the shuttle program has ended.
But now it is a great chapter in our history,
And it's end did afford me the chance to see the Endeavour.

Eventually we left the exhibit and headed back into the Science Center.
The kids' other favorite that day was the earthquake exhibit.
They had so many great models and ways to simulate earthquakes.
In one area, Ephram had fun lugging big soft wedges and blocks around to see if he could build an earthquake-proof structure.
Ephram, Charlie and I stood through a simulated earthquake on a plate.
And then there was the mini-shake table,
Where all of the kids had so much fun building little structures and seeing how they held up against a shake plate.

Macie finally woke up when it was nearly time to go.
Before we knew it, the museum was closing and it was time to leave.

But we weren't completely ready to say goodbye.
So we headed back to Riverside for dinner at one of our favorite places, The Spaghetti Factory.

We had such a fantastic day with Andy's family!