Base Camp to Space Camp: Our U-haul camper goes back to Huntsville

Base Camp!

After our trip to Huntsville, Alabama in April during Spring break, my son begged us to go to Space Camp. The traditional Space Camp is not cheap and I thought he might be a little young to spend that much time away from us. Fortunately, there was another option: Day Camp!  The rocket center does a day camp version of Space Camp during the summer for local elementary age kids. It's called the Rocket Explorer Experience. It's 8am-5pm Central time, and they get to do a lot of fun stuff. With this in mind, we took the camper to Monte Sano State Park again and became locals for a week!

The camp is less than $300/week at the time of this writing. There are 3 options: Space, Aviation, and Rockets. We opted for the Space one which was an all around focus. We may try this again and opt for a different one next time. You will need to plan early and sign them up in advance of summer to ensure a spot. They did a lot of simulators and rides and exhibits at the center. The fee includes lunch and afternoon snack. All I had to provide was a water bottle and morning snack. On one day they have a water day and go swimming. They also build rockets though my son didn't get to launch his that week. It was still a neat souvenir to bring home. (We will likely build and launch rockets at the park now that he's into it.) 

So my daughter was not into the space camp idea (though after hearing "bubba" talk about it she may want to go). So the rest of the time, we set out to explore the city, just the two of us. The first day we spent setting up camp and relaxing in the hammocks. We picked up my son from camp and met up with my cousin, who happens to live there, for dinner. The second day we began our exploring. The first stop was the Huntsville Botanical Garden which was a real treat. They have a large series of gardens to explore and this summer had a mythological scavenger hunt throughout the gardens. The scavenger hunt was really fun and they had all these various sized sculptures of mythological creatures scattered around the park. The botanical gardens is also home to the Purdy Butterfly House. My daughter really enjoyed that. They also have a children's garden area that's complete with playground, sandbox, sprinkler/misting stations and all themed for kids. For the adults, among some of the highlights are a vegetable garden, birding trail, and water garden.  Definitely worth a visit.

After three hours at the botanical gardens in the morning, we had lunch and found a splash pad at one of the local parks. There are 3 parks in Huntsville that have splash pads. We visited Brahan Spring Park which wasn't far from the gardens and had a splash pad. It also has playground and a small lake for fishing.

Many folks don't know this, but you can go to the space center and check out one of their IMAX or other movies without buying a pass to the entire center. Tickets are around $7/8 (kid/adult). We've done this a couple times and it's a great way to get into some air conditioning out of the summer heat for an hour. My daughter and I watched one this time about Saturn with great pics from the Cassini space craft mission. So if you've done the space center before but are still looking for something to do, you may want to check out what they're showing and catch a film.

On the fourth day, we stumbled onto two of my daughter's top 3 favorite things from the trip. First we found the EarlyWorks Childrens History Museum.  Over the years we've visited a lot of children's museums. Some of them, like the one in Greenville, SC, are amazing. Others, like the one in Atlanta, are not great. This was one of the better ones and we spent 3 hours in the morning there. The museum has various historical (Alabama history focused) locations like a log cabin, keel boat, and, my daughter's favorite, the old general store. There's a story telling tree, activities everywhere, and a nice Helen Keller area (she was from Alabama). Everything is hands on, from dressing up to selling supplies in the general store to setting the table in the log cabin and even hoisting the flag on the keel boat. It's very well done and I highly recommend it. Alabama is celebrating their bicentennial next year so I expect they'll have lots of special programs in 2019 there. This was my daughter's favorite thing we did all week.

Big Spring Park

A couple of blocks from the EarlyWorks museum is Big Spring Park. This is a nicely laid out park with a large lake that feeds into a canal like system. There's lots of green space, walking/running paths and literally thousands of fish in the lake. I've never seen so many fish and school (herd) of them will follow you as you walk around the lake. We really enjoyed this place and feeding the fish and ducks and visited a couple times during our stay there. If for nothing else, you have to go just to see all the fish!

Look at all those fish!

We really enjoyed staying at Monte Sano SP again. We camped at a site with an overlook of the valley, and it was generally cooler by 7-10 degrees up there in the trees than down in the city. The park staff was very pleasant, and I've made this our go to park if we plan to be in the area again. The trails and atmosphere is great there. I can't recommend it enough.

Overall, we had a great trip. It's a bit unusual for us to stay in a place for a whole week. We did enjoy ourselves and exploring a lot of what Huntsville had to offer. I also really enjoyed the one-on-one time with my daughter. Oh and my daughter's other item on her favorite top 3 things we did this week was breakfast with me at Galen's Restaurant (which we wrote about in our first Huntsville trip). If that doesn't melt your heart, then I don't know what would. Not sure where the road will take us next or when, but always looking forward to the next adventure.