arrival at the Marriot Grand Hotel

Here is the newest astronaut after a space walk.

This is a space shuttle sleeping bag. In weightless space, one can sleep anywhere in any position if he is secured somehow.

This is one of the engines that powered one of the space shuttles. It was tested at the Stennis center.
We were wakened at 7 and began packing. We went to the breakfast room but ate our cereal and boudin instead of their waffles. We were able to leave by 9, an hour earlier than I had expected. We drove east without any trouble. I was hoping we would be caught by some rain but weren’t. We stopped at the Mississippi welcome center for lunch. We ate some of the things we had brought in our cooler. We finished the Texas caviar and had a somewhat soggy ham and cheese sandwich. The blessing was that we had not put the bread into the cooler therefore the somewhat. We also decided to take the tour of the John C. Stennis Space Test Center. Here is where the engines for the space shuttle are tested here. We were taken by bus to the grounds because it is an isolated site because of the loud noise during the tests. There was a very impressive museum too. We spent about 45 minutes there but could have spent another hour. We pressed on and arrived at the Marriot Grand Hotel around 5:30. It was amazing to see that there were no places for us to park our car. There are some conventions here, I guess. It is an extremely service oriented place and the man in charge of parking gave us free valet parking because we had no place to park. We drove back up the road a couple of miles and shared a dinner of shrimp and flounder at a seafood restaurant. It was delicious and much less expensive than the hotel. The menu ranged from 14.95 to 49.95 for entrees. No wonder Emily could not afford to bring her family. The sad truth is that, although she was told otherwise, there is a refrigerator in our room and a coffee maker. We brought boxes of food in that Evelyn had bought at Sam’s Club and even brought a slow cooker that we plan to use sometimes. We are really disappointed that the Beelis didn’t come but plan to have a great time with the Georges. Everything here is very plush.