Endeavour's Last Endeavor

Photo Courtesy of Lukas

Photo Courtesy of Lukas

Today the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew over Southern California piggybacked on NASA's special 747.  Lukas, Konrad and Dominik joined me (Tom), at a park near Disneyland where the Endeavour was scheduled to fly over.  We had the perfect spot to watch it flyover. 

The park was not my original plan, but thankfully I felt flexible today.  I originally planned to stop off at the park to burn off energy,  and then get in the van and park in a parking structure near Disneyland.  I drove by the parking structure about 90 minutes before the flyover and the traffic was already backed up around Disneyland.  When I arrived at the park,which is about 1/2 mile from Disneyland, I saw that a there were people camped out with cameras on the grass and homeschool moms with kids at the playground.  I scoped out the location and I felt that it was just as good, if not better, than the parking structure. 

The boys watching the approach of Endeavour

Now I said that we arrived 90 minutes early, but I did not know that we were that early.  From the reports on the radio I thought that it would fly over in less than 20 minutes, so it ended up being a long wait.  During that wait the following happened:
1) Dominik fell and got a bloody lip.
2) Konrad fell while climbing on a rock and cried for a minute or two, so I told the kids to go out onto the "safe" grass.
3) I caught Dominik chewing on a old lollipop stick he found in the grass.
4) I also caught Dominik chewing on an old Popsicle stick he found in the grass (ick, again!)

So the big moment arrived and people spotted Endeavour flying in from the west. From our first viewing to our last,  Endeavor flew over us just to the north for what seemed like a good solid minute.  Wow!  We left and made it back home to watch it land on TV.

Konrad's photo of Lukas

Photo courtesy of Lukas

Photo courtesy of Lukas