TRAVEL TALES -- Young Chang

It started when Jake Dayton started playing with his older brother’s

Legos because that’s what little kids do -- play with their older

siblings’ stuff.

Over the years, the 11-year-old got rather good at building things

and, eventually, built a space station out of Lego pieces that made it

into the Kennedy Space Center’s Mars Survival Challenge build-off.

The center hosted Jake and children from around the country to compete

in a Lego building match. His family -- father Rick Dayton, mother

Shirley Dayton and older brother Patrick -- took a weekend trip to Cape

Canaveral, Fla. with him in early December to take part in the contest.

“They flew all the kids and families down there,� Rick Dayton said.

“It was a real fun time. Our son was a runner-up. Then they gave us a VIP

tour of the Space Center.�

The Newport Beach family, who had never been to the landmark before,

was most impressed with the size of things there.

“And they had an actual space shuttle there,� said Shirley Dayton, an

architect. “You could go inside, and there were people that we met there.

It was very impressive.�

But during the Lego build-off, family members pretty much sat in the

viewing area watching and cheering while Jake built a space lab in 90

minutes.

“They wanted him to do a lab on Mars that was capable of collecting

specimens and somehow relaying them back to earth,� said Rick Dayton,

also an architect.

Jake said that his metal-colored lab was built as if to be capable of

science exploration and communication with Earth.

“There are maybe about 500 pieces,� he said.

Jake’s favorite part about touring the Kennedy Space Center was seeing

one of the Apollo rockets that had actually traveled in space.

“And we saw one that wasn’t a real shuttle that went up, but it could

go up,� Jake said. “They use it for people to see. It was really cool.�

* Have you, or someone you know, gone on an interesting vacation

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