The last stop before the final frontier

The Kennedy Space Center, while not exactly around the corner from Disney World, is well worth the drive. Even if the drive includes an hour of Samson helping his six-year-old cousin, Christopher, realize how glad he is to be an only child.

Jane (and for that matter, Uncle Mike) slept the whole way. I was in the back back [on the way and on the way back] with the sleepers, trapped.

If you've never had an hour of three-year-old knock-knock jokes, all of which contain the punchline "poop," set to the background music of a Nintendo gameboy/kiddie soma device, consider yourself lucky.

Even so, the space center is really impressive. To be honest, any place that has alligators wandering around on the roads is pretty cool in my book. But there were also huge rockets and lots of interesting things to look at (and some to climb on). Not to mention the shuttle Atlantis sitting on the launch pad ready for its next mission.

We even got to see a full-scale model of some segments of the international space station. Samson was very impressed with --- wait for it --- the zero-gravity toilet.