We will be doing this on Friday, March 21. This will include transportation on a shuttle bus round trip from Hotel Icon in downtown Houston to NASA. The transportation will leave from the Hotel Icon at 7:30am. This event will include a breakfast that has an Astronaut as a guest speaker! While you are enjoying a breakfast (eggs, fruit, breakfast meat, coffee, juice, etc.) they will talk about their background to becoming an Astronaut and their experiences while in space (most likely this will be someone who flew on the Space Shuttle and went to the International Space Station). They will most likely take questions from the group at the end.

After the breakfast, we will take a tram tour to Historic Mission Control. This tour lasts about an hour and is truly awe-inspiring. It will drive around the working NASA buildings; this tour includes building 30, which is Mission Control. We will see where all the Apollo missions to the moon were commanded from. If you’ve seen “The Right Stuff” and “Apollo 13” movies, you will feel like you are sitting on those sets, except this is the real deal! The mission control room will come to life showing the highlights of the Apollo 11 moon landing – the first time we set foot on the moon. Get your Kleenex ready, because the emotion of all of this is pretty big, no matter how young or old you are!

Beyond that, there will be a little over 2 hours of free time to roam around the tourist center to see all the displays and artifacts. You can touch a moon rock, see an Apollo capsule, and much more! There’s also another tram tour included if you wish to do that – this is Rocket Park. Jessie highly recommends this one too, as she’s a special volunteer over there 😊 Over at Rocket Park, you can see a fully built Saturn V rocket, the one that took the astronauts to the moon! There are some other historical rockets to look at too. On your tram ride, you may catch a glimpse of some Texas Longhorn cattle!

At 1:30pm we will take the shuttle bus back into Hotel Icon. If you feel that you’d like to stay at the Space Center longer (or shorter), you can find your way back into town on your own at your leisure. It takes about an hour to get back into downtown Houston.

Now to the price! Not to sound “sales-y”, but if you were to do this on your own at full price, this experience would cost over $130. So, we are going to pick up majority of the cost. To book, this will be $50 per person. This will be a first come first serve opportunity, and the way to reserve will be to let Jessie know and send the $$ (Venmo: Jessie-Allen-0689, PayPal: jjallen3, Zelle: use Jessie’s email (jjallen3@buffalo.edu) or cell, 585-771-0123). Once we receive the $$, your name will be added to the list!

The deadline to book your spot for this special tour is Friday November 22, so make sure to book it before then if you’re interested!

(See the tab "NASA Johnson Space Center" to learn more about NASA JSC!)

We will be spending the day at the rodeo the day after the wedding on Sunday March 23. This is also the finale day of the rodeo, so it’s always a big show. We will be getting a bunch of tickets together. On Sundays, the rodeo inside NRG Stadium starts at 2:45pm (gates for this open at 2pm). All the cowboy parts of the rodeo occur then (bull riding, horse bucking, barrel racing, chuck wagon racing, etc.) and go for a few hours. Around 5pm is when the concert will start and is also included in your ticket. The stadium events should wrap up around 8pm latest that night.

The concert on this day is Luke Bryan!! He’s a country artist, for those of you who don’t know. He’s been on American Idol as a judge. He puts on an AWESOME show and is usually really energetic. He’s been to the rodeo a few times!

Also included in your ticket is access to all the grounds around the stadium, which has the carnival, food (ANY kind of fried concoction you can think of will be here!), shopping and animal displays. The gates for this open much earlier in the day and should be open past the concert. There’s also a country dancing and bar area called the Hideout, a super fun place to partake in the dancing, or even just people watch people doing great country dancing. Note that the carnival rides and food will cost extra $$.

For this excursion, people will get to NRG park however they would like to on their own. The Metro Rail is free to the area (it’s a bit of a walk to and from the Rodeo grounds), Ride Shares (be prepared to wait because of traffic!) or driving in. There are tons of paid parking lots around NRG, and trams run around the lots and take you to the grounds (included in the price of parking). https://www.rodeohouston.com/plan-your-visit/parking-transportation/

I will be trying to get tickets in the $62 price range. These typically are good seats, and you can see all the rodeo events and concert really good. (Note that the stage gets brought out right before the concert. The stage slowly rotates throughout the show; so there’s no “front” of the stage; everywhere gets to see the performer!) With taxes/fees they typically will come out to around $85 per person. We will be covering a portion of the cost of these tickets; the price that you pay is $40 per person. (Venmo: Jessie-Allen-0689, PayPal: jjallen3, Zelle: use Jessie’s email (jjallen3@buffalo.edu) or cell, 585-771-0123). Once I receive the $$, your name will be added to the list! Also note that the tickets are through a mobile app called AXS. I will send you your ticket through that platform when the tickets are purchased, so if you’re interested in attending, make sure you download that app. This will also be a first come first serve opportunity if you’d like to sit with our group. There is a quick turn-around for this activity! Tickets go on sale next week, and to ensure we can all sit around each other and get the best selection, the deadline to send Jessie $$ is this Monday 1/13.

There usually is a high demand to get tickets for each concert, but especially with it being the finale night, and the concert is Luke Bryan, this will be a unique situation! So, thanks in advance for letting me know ahead of the Monday deadline.

(See the tab "Houston Rodeo" for more info!)