Visiting the Space Coast

The second half of our visit to Florida was an exploration of Merritt Island. NASA uses the island as the base of operations, but they don't need all that space. The remaining land is protected in the form of Cape Canaveral National Seashore and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

After all the raining of the last couple days, we finally got a break in the weather with gentle breezes and cloudy skies. We started the day at Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge in the Oak and Palm Hammock. 

From the looks on their faces, you think we'd just made the kids run a marathon. I promise we'd only been on our feet for about 10 minutes at this point.

Florida is pretty flat, so I hesitate to call it a hike, more like a walk in the park. Jurassic Park.

The only raptors we saw were of the modern variety. turkey vultures and osprey were in abundance. We also got some close up looks at herons, pelicans, egrets, and anhingas.

 

We stopped by a pier known to be a popular spot for manatees to hang out. We did see some! Well, portions of them anyway. We saw a couple tails and backs from a distance.

We saw a couple gators as well. Thank goodness for a telephoto lens! We got to see them and photograph all the various animals without getting too close for their (or our) comfort.

 

Why did the anhinga cross the road? No seriously. Enquiring minds want to know. We did a self guided driving tour around a little lake, which is where we spotted most of the birds and gators. We ended up picnicking out of the back of our car, listening to the kids complain about the heat, the sun, the food, the car, and asking to go back to the house to watch TV.

The bathroom we stopped at had a kind of unusual bouncer hanging out on the door. Grandma Jamie learned the hard way what happens if you mess with the bouncer. It will jump on your head, excreting it's mucus then go right back to the wall, that's what.

My plan was originally to drive right on up through the Merritt refuge to Canaveral National Seashore, but the bridge connecting them was being repaired. So we had to drive all the way out on the mainland, and drive up and around and down. It's a whole ordeal that took a long time. So we didn't get to see a couple of the things I'd hoped, like the area known for wintering bald eagles. Instead we just got the kids to do some junior ranger stuff, watched the visitors center educational film, and took in the views from the top of turtle mound.

I thought the mound was going to be a small sandy hill. It was actually a big jungle covered hill that is accessible with a boardwalk. The hill isn't natural, it was build by the Timucuan people who lived on the island. The hill was formed by 35,000 cubic yards worth of shells, plus other items and refuse. Yeah, it's huge. We don't really know why they built it, though it's been theorized it was to provide high ground as protection from hurricane swells. From the top you can see the Atlantic ocean to the east and Mosquito Lagoon to the west.

On our drive to Canaveral Seashore, we passed the most intriguing looking little restaurant. There was zero question as to where we were going to stop for a snack on the way back to the house.

the soft serve kept us on our feet until we could get dinner made. I'd absolutely recommend eating your dessert first, especially when you're on vacation and happen to see an ice cream shaped restaurant.

The next morning we hit up the other side of Merritt Island: The Kennedy Space Center.

You'd think we could see everything here in a day, but no. There were so many cool things to see, plus extra activities and presentations, we just couldn't get to all of it. We did get to the main attractions, though, such as the space shuttle Atlantis.

 

This is an actual space shuttle that flew real missions, as are most of the exhibits at the Space Center. These shuttles are so iconic, they are literally on the t-shirt I was wearing that day. It's hard to convey the scale and size, but just to help you understand, I couldn't get far enough away or a sharp enough angle to fit the entire shuttle in the frame of a photo. Here's my best effort: 

The Atlantis exhibit had so many fun things to do, lots of flight simulator games and hands on things, I wasn't sure we'd ever get the boys to leave.

I think Arthur especially loved the ISS crawl-through tunnels.

We did eventually get the kids outside with the promise of lunch. We ate our picnic outside where little black birds were lying in wait for every dropped crumb. As a result, I think the boys were even messier with the crumbs than usual and the birds might have eaten more of their food than they did.

Next up: we took the bus tour, passing one of the largest buildings in the world by volume. This is where rockets were/are built and housed pre-launch. Keep in mind, this building looks pretty close to us and like a fairly normal warehouse. It is was actually really far away, it's just so big that it's creating an optical illusion.

The bus ride ends at the Apollo Mission exhibit. One of my favorite parts is that we got to see the Apollo mission control still there as it was in the 60's and 70's. Plus rovers and capsules and the biggest freaking rocket you can imagine.

Finding a little Astronaut Snoopy as we prepared to exit (through the gift shop obvs) was more exiting to Arthur than the rest of the thing combined.

After returning from our bus tour, we visited Planet Play, the big indoor playground. The kids enjoyed it so much for approximately 20 minutes before they were SO HUNGRY that they couldn't carry on.

We went outside to eat some snacks, watched a bird steal fries from a woman's tray while she was looking down at her phone, and then visited the Mars mission exhibit. There were models of the various Mars rovers a the real ones are--as of time of writing--231 million miles away on Mars. Plus there were models of vehicles might be used in any potential manned missions.

Lastly, we visited the exhibit where is housed some of the modern SpaceX and Boeing capsules and rockets. We fit in the flight simulator ride and then we had to call it a day.

By this point it was approaching closing time and the kids were universally tired. So we passed through the Rocket Garden on our way out.

I think we managed to have a really fun time learning all about space. If nothing else Paul is now asking to watch the movie Apollo 13 and we're more excited than ever for the Artemis missions.