We watched the Space Shuttle Discovery fly piggy-back into Dulles airport!! It was so unbelievably cool. Mr. Pickles informed me yesterday evening of the news from one of his coworkers who follows these kinds of cool things. Last week when we were in Chantilly near the airport, I noticed from our parking spot outside Milwaukee Frozen Custard that it afforded a great view of planes landing. So I decided to head out that way this morning. And then we hit horrible, horrible traffic. Apparently several thousand other locals had the same idea, because traffic was snarled all around the area! I listened to the radio news station in despair, believing that we had missed it, since they were reporting that it had actually arrived 30 minutes ahead of schedule. But then hope was restored when I heard it was going to make a circuit around DC before it actually landed 45 minutes later. AND! While we were stuck at a high point on the Fairfax County Parkway, we just happened to catch a glimpse of it through a clearing in the trees! It was flying reeeeally low. Everyone saw it from the car, and we started to get excited then.
I kept tuned into WTOP, and they gave updates every couple minutes with enthusiastic reports from people stationed all over the area. I love it when news reporters get so excited about something like this. :) The shuttle actually ended up circling around the DC area 3 or 4 times, giving people all over the area lots of chances to watch it flying right over their house. It was only 1500 feet up, so it was really, really close and easy to see.
We finally, finally made it to the parking lot, and joined all the other spectators lining Rte. 50! Lots of moms with little kids and strollers. :) Several people caught in traffic leaned their heads out of their cars to ask us what we were looking at. "The Space Shuttle landing!"
There were a couple car dealerships nearby whose roofs were full of people, watching.
They were good indicators of where the shuttle was, because they had a better view than those of us on the ground. So when they all turned a certain direction and pointed, we knew where to look. :)
We were really only standing around for about 30 minutes, and we got to see the shuttle fly around several times, and up close TWICE. This was the first time:
It was SO COOL. You can hear Daniel saying enthusiastically, "Een!" which I guess is Daniel-speak for "airplane." (He's really into airplanes, so he was as excited as everyone else about this.
Many of the moms bailed after this flyby. The rest of us had noticed that the jet didn't have its landing gear down, so we stuck around to watch it land for real.
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| are you totally excited? are you?? are you??? are... okay, I admit it was much chillier than I was expecting... |
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| here it comes! |
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| you can even see how the shuttle was attached to the carrier plane, along with its fighter jet escort |
I'm SO GLAD we did this! Since Mr. Pickles didn't get to see it, :( we're going to go the Air & Space Museum in Chantilly later this summer, so we can all see it up close.
Hey, those of you living in LA should keep your ears open for news of when Endeavor will be flown to your area at the end of the month! Details at www.nasa.gov
