On the morning of May 5th at 2 AM daughter, Kami, and her husband, Jason, awakened to their alarm. they crawled out of the comfort of their tent to check on view from our beach site in Gaviota and the weather report from Lompoc. Lompoc was totally socked in with May Gray, near zero visibility, but we had a clear sky at the beach.
I was allowed to sleep in until 3:30 AM when my alarm went off. Along with Kg we gathered under a waning gibbous moon at the old Gaviota pier and watched the NASA briefing on Kami’s cell phone.
Right on schedule at May 5th at 4:05 AM the Atlas 5 ignition switch was turned. We could see the ignition on the live NASA broadcast, but the rocket immediately disappeared into the exhaust and fog.
Within a few seconds the hill to the north of us began to sport a bright orange glow. And before i could turn the tripod around the InSight’s orange exhaust plume was streaking nearly directly overhead at 14,000 miles-per-hour.
The InSight headed directly toward that gibbous moon before disappearing completely still well above the horizon. Although we did not feel the vibrations we could still hear the roar of the engines.
I now know what the lovely Kg looks like at 4 AM … still beautiful!
My first impressions of camping at Gaviota State Beach are not real impressive. Only sites 29 and 39 offer anything resembling privacy, all other sites are tiny and in pairs. I doubt if anything over 28’ could fit. But it does have a camp store on weekends and a beach! Oh yes, a train and winds of Biblical proportions! I’ll do a more complete review with the next post along with how we spent the rest of our day.
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