Scenic Shuttle

While in Savannah, we spent some time at my Uncle's house on the Wilmington River, and it just so happened that the night we were there is when the Space Shuttle Discovery took off. After a couple false starts, we made it out to the dock at 8:47pm (we got fooled by the countdown, and they had a "scheduled hold" at T-minus 9 minutes).

We kept staring towards the south, hoping to catch a glimpse of something (not sure what). While we were debating where exactly we should look, someone exclaimed, "There's a glow in the distance!"

Sure enough, it started almost like a sunrise, with just a reddish glow over the horizon. After about 15 seconds or so, all of a sudden a bright orange ball of flame rose above the trees. It stayed a pretty small ball of orange until (we assume) it rotated, and then we saw the tail (?) of the rockets - like a streak of orange in the sky.

Needless to say, it was pretty surreal. Savannah is about 300 miles from Cape Canaveral, and it was amazing to be able to see it from that far.