Not Exactly Wedding Crashers

Last weekend two friends from the lab, Sara and Ian, got married in Huntsville so Will and I headed out there for the wedding. And since we're nerds, we decided to continue with our visits to aerospace museums by arriving early and checking out the U.S. Space and Rocket Museum that is located there.

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Originally uploaded by gatechcycling.

We left at about 730 on a rainy Friday afternoon. Will surprised me with earrings to match my pearl necklace, which was awesome because they matched perfectly with the dress I got to wear. We decided to take the shorter more scenic route, which first went up I-75 north.
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Originally uploaded by gatechcycling.

What's up I-75 north? My favorite place ever, Texas Roadhouse. But, since we had eaten there more than several times the past few weeks (just luck, I guess) we stopped at Provino's instead. The drive was nice took us through the southern part of the mountains in Georgia and Alabama, including Lookout Mountain parkway. We arrived at the hotel in Huntsville at midnight, which we then realized was 11pm Alabama time (yay!) but not before witnessing a really bad car wreck that somehow left my car mostly unscathed except for all the shattered glass all over it.

We woke up early and after asking for a later check out time, we headed to the museum. It was a pretty neat experience, and we got some neat pictures. The museum had some neat exhibits chronicling the history of space exploration, which I don't know as much about since I'm an aviation snob. Inside they had many historical documents, space suits, wind tunnel models, engines. They also had a neat exhibit that made me very disoriented and we rode the simulator which took us on a Martian roller coaster (ok, that was disappointing, we were hoping for something more realistic). Outside, they have many different rockets and spacecraft just sitting around, including 2 saturn 5s, one standing up so you can see how tall, and one lying on it's side. They also had a g force accelerator, which we went on (I didn't not enjoy that) and another ride similar to acrophobia, which neither of us wanted to ride.

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Originally uploaded by gatechcycling.

We headed back, changed, grabbed lunch at Chili's and headed to the church. We sat with other ASDLers and watched the nice (and short) ceremony, then headed to the reception (located in the church, as well). Sara and Ian looked awesome, and after a relatively calm (read: no alcohol and not much dancing) reception we piled back into the car and reversed the beautiful drive home.

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Originally uploaded by gatechcycling.

All in all, a pretty decent (but expensive... who would've guessed?) weekend.