Real Travel Adventures International Magazine/Archives/Huntsville, AL

Real Travel Adventures International Magazine

Alabama Flag

LOST AND FOUND IN OUTER SPACE

Story and Photos by RON KAPON

If your travel plans call for a visit to Montgomery, Alabama and a trip through time to recount the Civil Rights Trail, Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma to Montgomery march, let me recommend you extend your trip for a few days.

Leaving Montgomery, you can stop two hours later at Oneonta and the Covered Bridges of Blount County. Where were Clint Eastwood and Merle Streep? Even if you are not a country music fan, you probably have heard of Alabama, the band. Twenty years together, 65 million albums sold, 15 Platinum albums, 42 number one singles and two Grammies. Two of their members live in the Gadsden area. One, Jeff Cook, owns the Warehouse, where one can have lunch and return at night for a little line dancing. No, you do not have to give up the Fox Trot! Every mid-August the World’s Longest Yard Sale takes place from Gadsden, Alabama to Covington, Kentucky; 450 miles of yard sale bargains. For more info- (888) 805-4740.

Then it is off to Fort Payne and the Alabama Museum & fan club headquarters. Fort Payne is the Sock Capitol of the World and C.J. Wholesale Socks is the world’s largest sock outlet store. Here you can sample a world’s longest and a world’s largest all in one day. Wow! Another surprise is finding a 50,000 square foot furniture store, Atkins & Sons (there are two sons) outside of Fort Payne, at the crossroads of two state highways. People travel from all over the south to look and buy. In the same area are DeSoto State Park on Lookout Mountain and the Shady Grove Dude Ranch. Still looking for Clint Eastwood.

People come from all over the US to visit the Unclaimed Luggage Center in Scottsboro. If you have ever lost your luggage on a trip and the airline has reimbursed you for your loss, it will probably end up here, the Mecca for diehard shoppers. Unclaimed Baggage is a one-of-a-kind store snuggled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Founded in 1980, it has expanded under the direction of the son of the founders, to cover a city block, and over one million items pass through the store annually. There is a concierge desk; children’s play area and a café. Prices are 50-80% off Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price. About 60% of the merchandise is clothing and there also is section for lost and unclaimed cargo.

US Space & Rocket Center

Forty miles east of Huntsville and the US Space & Rocket Center are the Cathedral Caverns, which contains the world’s largest stalagmite forest and the world’s largest frozen waterfall (here we go again). Once in Huntsville (you have traveled from southern to northern Alabama and are almost at the Tennessee border- Memphis to the west, Nashville to the north and Chattanooga to the east) stop at Earlyworks Children’s History Museum and the Alabama Constitutional Village, the South’s largest (not world’s) hands-on history complex, circa 1819.The Huntsville Museum of Art has a traveling exhibition section and recently featured the Buccellati Silver Animals. Stroll through the Huntsville Botanical gardens and Butterfly House and see hundreds of those winged beauties up close as they fly free. Try dinner at 801 Franklin, a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence restaurant.

Up Up & Away

Are you ready to tour the US Space & Rocket Center, the earth’s largest (same as world’s?) space museum housing actual spacecraft from the NASA space program, including the nation’s only full-scale shuttle mockup and the Apollo 16 capsule. There are 60 hands-on exhibits, the Spacedome IMAX Theatre and the world famed Space Camp Training Center. Check out the 363-foot Saturn V rocket designed in Huntsville to take astronauts to the Moon. The center is a National Historic Landmark. Try the Space Shot that soars 140 feet in the air with 4G’s of force during liftoff. Experience three times the tug of gravity as you spun inside the centrifuge. Take a journey to the Red Planet inside the Mars Mission simulator, or climb on a cliff-face of a Martian volcano. Kids were arriving and leaving at the US Space Camp that provides intensive astronaut training for youngsters, teachers and other adults. This is one of the “Big Three” for “space junkies”; the Kennedy Space Center, Huntsville and Houston’s Johnson’s Space Center. Once you have completed visiting all three, you are really” out of this world”.

ALTHOUGH Ron Kapon IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED, HE TEACHES AT 3 UNIVERSITIES, HELPS IN A WINE SHOP, RUNS THE LARGEST WINE EDUCATION CLUB IN AMERICA, IS A SPEECH WRITER FOR SEVERAL POLITICIANS IN NYC, HAS A SYNDICATED RADIO PROGRAM, CONSULTS FOR DONALD TRUMP'S NEW MAGAZINE ETC ETC. AND HAS SOME FREE TIME TO MENTOR DISADVANTAGED YOUNG PEOPLE. HE TRAVELS WHEN HE IS NOT TEACHING. HE IS A FOUNDING PARTNER, WITH LEE STANLEY, OF EAST WEST NEWS BUREAU.

RACE LIKE YOU'RE ON THE MOON; NASA'S 10TH ANNUAL GREAT

MOONBUGGY RACE FOR

STUDENTS SET FOR APRIL IN HUNTSVILLE, ALA.

Hundreds of high school and college students from throughout the United

States will meet the challenge to "race like they're on the Moon" in NASA's

Great Moonbuggy Race April 11-12, 2003, conducted annually at the nearby

U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville sponsors the event as one

way to motivate the next generation of engineers and scientists. This will

mark the 10th year for student teams to tackle designing, building and

racing a human-powered vehicles over a lunar-like obstacle course.

The registration deadline for the competition is Feb. 3, 2003. High school

teams will race Friday, April 11, and college teams will take to the course

Saturday, April 12.

The Great Moonbuggy Race is inspired by development some 30 years ago of the

lunar roving vehicle, a program managed by engineers at the Marshall Center.

That team's challenge was to design a compact, lightweight "all-terrain

vehicle" that could be transported to the Moon in the relatively small

Apollo spacecraft. They met the challenge: Astronauts used separate lunar

rovers on the final three Moon missions -- Apollo 15, 16 and17, to travel

52.51 miles (84.5 kilometers), gather 620.6 pounds (281.5 kilograms) of rock

and soil samples and return them to Earth.

"It's hard to believe it's been a decade since our first Great Moonbuggy

Race -- and more than 30 years since our astronauts took their first

moonbuggy ride on July 31, 1971," said Durlean Bradford, Moonbuggy Race

coordinator in the education department at the Marshall Center. "We expect a

lot of returning schools for this anniversary race -- maybe the biggest

field of competitors ever. We encourage teams to register early and get

started today on their moonbuggy."

In 2002, 33 college teams from 18 states and 27 high school teams

representing nine states and Puerto Rico vied for the top three places in

each division. A university from Colombia participated as an exhibition

team.

Students face a variety of real-world engineering problems while designing

and building their moonbuggies. The challenge continues when a male and a

female race each vehicle over a half-mile course of simulated lunar terrain,

encountering man-made craters, rocks, ridges and soft soil.

Prizes are awarded not only for the fastest vehicles, but also to the team

whose design represents the best technical approach to solve the engineering

problem of navigating the simulated lunar surface.

"This is fun, but it's also downright hard work for the teams," Bradford

said. "They put in countless hours to come up with their design, figure out

what works, build the moonbuggy and then race it. Their math, science,

engineering, design and teamwork skills are all put to the test."

For more information on how to participate in the Great Moonbuggy Race,

contact Bradford at (256) 544-5920 or by e-mail:

mailto:durlean.Bradford@msfc.nasa.gov

General information about the event may be found on the Web site

Real Travel Adventures Web Magazine

Thanks for visiting us!

Add to Bookmarks

_________________________________________________

Home Previous Page Next Page

__________________________________________________

If any links don't work

PLEASE NOTIFY US.