Another Busy Day in Houston

We started off the morning doing something we never considered before, boarding Honey.  Yesterday while Mia was finishing our laundry, Honey and I went looking for Doggy Care places close to the hotel.  We found the Majestic Pet Hotel and Boutique complete with a Pet Medical Center.  We walked in and there was a room full of dogs with a couple of attendants kind of like the child care at some of the local stores.  I inquired as to the day care and was told that Honey would be most welcome and after filling out some paperwork with one of the attendants, we arranged to drop Honey off this morning so Mia and I could enjoy a day to ourselves.  It was like leaving your child for the first time but we managed to make it out the door as Honey was taken to meet the other dogs.

Our next stop was a donut shop.  Angela's Donut Shop was the first one we found and we both enjoyed a mid morning snack.  

On to the Houston Space Museum just across the street from the Johnson Space Center.  Upon arrival in the parking lot, the first thing you notice is a giant Boeing 747 with a Space Shuttle attached.

While the Shuttle is a replica, the 747 is the historic NASA 905 shuttle carrier.  The much modified and reinforced Boeing 747 was used to fly the retired shuttles to their prospective museums.  The last flight was to Ellington Airfield where NASA 905 was disassembled by Boeing engineers into seven large pieces.  Transported in the late night to the Houston Space Museum, where it was reassembled.  A replica of the Independence shuttle was mounted to it in August of 2014.

The museum is full of information and displays of various things from the early era of space travel.  On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced with a speech to some 35,000 attendees at Rice Stadium in Houston that "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win."  

Kennedy's speech was meant to prompt the U.S. citizens to back one of the biggest efforts mankind has ever undertaken.  Over the next decades the United States had many successes and failures in space.  Space research has brought huge developments in medical as well as other branches of the scientific community.  Research continues even though the shuttle program has ended.
Mia wanted to go to a local quilt store so I drove her over to Webster to this store.  They even had special parking.
We start the trip home tomorrow, heading north to Wichita Falls, Texas.
That was our day.  Hope yours was great too....

We both came away amazed at what mankind has accomplished and wondering why, if we can do this, we can't work together to solve some of the issues and problems we have right here on our own terraform.

When she came out of the store, I was informed that there was a Quilt Show in Pearland.  I drove her to the the Knights of Columbus building so she could enjoy it.

Once she was done there, it was dinner time.  We stopped by Randy's Smokehouse BBQ.  I thought the brisket in Kansas city was the best I ever had, until I tasted this one.  Lost in heaven in Houston and a taste of Mia's pulled pork sandwich wasn't bad either.

We returned to the Majestic Pet Hotel to pickup Honey, who was more than happy to see us.  The attendants all raved about her and she got a report card.

Basically, she did really well with all attendants giving her high marks.