Space City with Mansions and Tornado

On Thursday, June 30th we traveled from our campsite at DeSoto State Park to Huntsville, AL for a day trip.  Huntsville is known as the "Space City."  Our son, John, and his nephew, David, attended Space Camp there for about two weeks back in the early 1990's.  We thought it would be fun to visit again.  Linda loves all things N.A.S.A.  Addiction to the N.A.S.A. channel is Linda.  She watches all the shuttle launches and landings.  We've seen many launches live from the Cape as well as one landing.  Below are pictures (partial) of the Saturn V rocket.  It was too hard to fix it all in one frame.  The rocket is immense!

Of course the Saturn V was part of the Apollo program.  Remember "Houston, we have a problem".  Actor Tom Hanks will be forever remembered in his acting career for repeating that famous line.  Below are pictures of other space stuff.  The museum is full of fabulous exhibits with tons of information.

I wonder how this vehicle would tow behind the bus?

 Below is a picture of Tim in front of a famous Airstream trailer used for quarantining the crew.

After spending some of the morning and all afternoon at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, we decided to tour a district of historic homes and mansions of Huntsville.  The city was originally named Twickenham.  Eventually it was renamed after the town founder. Twickenham remains the name of one of the city's most famous historic districts with many homes and mansion being built prior to the Civil War.  Many of its buildings survived the war, because the Union occupied and used its buildings as a base of operations  Below are some of the pictures we took.

Huntsville contains the most dense concentration of antebellum homes in Alabama.  The homes represent the Federal and Greek Revival style among many others.  We would have loved to see the interiors!

From Huntsville we drove 30 miles southeast to Lake Guntersville State Park.  We had planned to stay at the campground, but heard it had been devastated by a tornado.  This campground used to have some tall beautiful trees.  The pictures below tell the story.  The campground was stripped.  Amazingly, no one was killed.  Many RVs were damaged or destroyed.  The lodge/hotel that sits on a bluff immediately above the campground only sustained minimal damage.  Mother nature has no rhyme or reason.

A few of trees and a battered restroom/bathhouse remain

We've already experienced living through a direct hit in our bus by a tornado and we don't want to again.  We drove back to our campsite in DeSoto State Park shaking our heads.