We were headed along the Space Coast on Sunday 8th March to the campsite we’d booked which was in Port Canaveral called Jetty Park. Read on the way that the Space coast area code is actually 321 because in 1999 the residents petitioned to get those digits in their phone numbers in honour of the rocket launches – brilliant!!. The lovely lady John had spoken to when he’d made the booking (who told him to ask for her in person because she just “had to see our European Rig”) said to get there in time to watch the cruise ships go out at about 4pm. Have to confess this did not really sound all that appealing to me. But we trotted off there having set up camp and found the harbour wall absolutely heaving. Families picnicking, all their chairs set up facing out into the harbour channel. So we parked ourselves next to them and the kids started fishing while we waited with bated breath!!
From where we were sat we could see straight across to the enormous NASA Kennedy Space Centre, apparently 15 miles away but so vast you could see it really clearly. We watched a submarine being towed out to sea by two tugboats, which was interesting (William commented that Grandad would have loved it – he would have done and John certainly did, Doreen!!). There were pelicans flying around and turtles bobbing around at the waters edge so all rather lovely.
On the dot of 4pm the first of the cruise ships slowly made it’s way out of port. Absolutely enormous thing, it was like a town floating past. Never been particularly attracted to a cruise and this one with Hey Macarena blaring out at deafening levels did nothing to convince me otherwise. The 2nd ship had “Push it” as their introductory song of choice. The kids were quite impressed with the huge water slide on board and the palm trees round the pool. We could still hear it once it was way out of dock. 2 more enormous cruise liners sailed out but lastly came the Disney Magic Cruise. Now if you were going to do a cruise I would guess Disney would add a certain ‘magic’ to the whole affair. Goofy was hanging off the back and the ships horn tooted “when you wish upon a star”. John thought this one actually looked like a proper cruise liner rather than a block of flats and with “Let it go!” blasting out, it was definitely our favourite of the lot. As each one passed the huge crowds applauded them. All very strange. However, the sun was shining again so I guess there would have been worse places to be on a Sunday afternoon.
Monday we had booked a surf lesson with the Ron Jon Surf School, which was another one of Suzy’s recommendations and were assured they were the best teachers (but of course we were sure we would all be naturals)!! We cycled 5 miles down the coast to Cocoa Beach and found the Ron Jon Surf School (right next door to the Fawlty Towers Hotel – no sign of Manuel). Larry and Mike were going to be our instructors – Mike had a handlebar moustache and Larry was very skinny with blonde dreadlocks. They were brilliant. Talked in a crazy surfer lingo – a lot of “dude” and “right on” and fist bumping, which the kids loved but just made John and I feel very OLD!!
We struggled into our wetsuits (sorry to say we didn’t get any photos of that or in fact of the surfing at all so you will have to use your imaginations on this one) and after the briefest of safety talks – where they pretty much told us to belly flop into the water rather than dive, not to touch Portuguese man of wars or stingrays – they then made us carry our 9’ boards to the sea. Charlie kept asking if they were joking about his board being the same size as mine. They weren’t. They did however carry it for him. So across the A1A we trotted which they reckoned was the most dangerous part of our lesson – if only!!
Here’s the part when they taught us the technique… We put the boards on the sand. Lay on them. Jumped up into a crouch. Then stood up. That was it. Lesson over. So off we all went into the sea. There were huge waves. They dragged us out to a suitable spot then turned us round pushed us off and shouted “pop up” at which stage we were meant to stand up. Charlie did – first time. Then basically was surfing for the whole 2-hour lesson. The paddling back out to sea bit was hardest part for him. He ended up lying on his board being carried above the head of Larry. Funnily enough he didn’t offer to do that for me. So I continued to get near drowned by each enormous wave on my way back out. As I don’t like getting water splashed into my face this was not necessarily the best activity for me. I let go of my board once and it hit John straight on the shoulder. Twice the board flew up and came down straight onto my head, which really really hurt (the second time I nearly bit through my tongue). However, I absolutely loved it. I managed to actually properly surf – like standing up and riding the wave almost into shore and was so shocked at myself I turned around to make sure everyone was watching and then of course immediately fell off. However, I managed it at least another 4 times and was damned proud.
John had a more successful time than me and got to standing much more reliably than me, but his shoulder injury put paid to any further desire for surfing. (2 days of ice packs and voltraol and it was still agony). William had a grin from ear to ear for the whole 2 hours. He did brilliantly and probably got to standing for at least half of the lesson. He assures me this is because he can skateboard…
By the time we staggered back to shore we were all shattered. I couldn’t manage to lift my board above my head for longer than it took to walk off the beach. So John ended up carrying mine and his bless him. We showered off and immediately exhaustion set in. We staggered to the restaurant Suzy had recommended for lunch. By the time our fish tacos had arrived we were all shivering (despite the blazing sunshine) and absolutely devoured our food. (You were right Suzy, I now dream of those damn tacos!!). We were all very proud of ourselves and felt wholly justified in buying our Ron Jon t-shirts from the huge store. This yellow and blue monster of a store is open 24 hours a day and has 7000 sq. ft. of surf and skateboard stuff – the boys were in heaven. We just about had the energy to make the cycle ride back to our campsite and collapsed. We were all asleep by 9pm!!
After all that exertion we felt wholly justified in then just hanging out on the beach. On Tuesday a nice family moved in next door. John & Kim and their 4 kids from Alberta, Canada are doing the same as us. They’ve been on the road since October and like us they only have 6 months on their visa here in the US (in fact as I hit ‘post’ on this I have seen that they have just got back into Canada to complete the last leg of their trip). The kids immediately made friends and so enjoyed raiding their kids’ significantly larger stash of toys and games (including a basketball net – imagine the moaning from our kids “Gabe and Jacob are allowed a hoop and we can’t even have Lego” etc. etc.). We hung out with them pretty much non-stop for the next couple of days, which was so lovely for us all. Shared stories of ‘life on the road’ and it was great to hear our own moans and challenges completely justified which we don’t think anyone else will ever ‘get’, as well of course as all the lovely bits that are unique to what we have done…
We did a lot of planning for the next few months and booked some flights, all made easier by ditching the kids for hours on end as they ran around with the Carle kids. They went to beach with them all one day and returned full of excitement that they had had to clear the water as a shark had been spotted!! Not sure why I hadn’t really been thinking about sharks so much – from then on in of course I mainly did knee deep paddling!!
We had been told that there was due to be a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral late on Thursday night so had decided we had to stay for that. Our site (next to the Carle’s) was booked for that night so we would have to move. But as luck would have it the pitch they had for us was actually down at the harbour wall and was the last space on the end so in fact the closest to the launch site (well still 15 miles away – but would have the best view).
As we got set up in our new spot John got chatting to a guy next door that it turned out had worked at NASA years ago including on the Apollo 11. He told John all manner of exciting Space facts. Like that the Kennedy space centre is the largest building in the world and has it’s own eco system (not sure how that works exactly). Apparently the cost to launch Saturn V rocket was $250 million and the space shuttles cost $1 billion plus each time, and then the Shuttles only carried 2/3 of the cargo Saturn carried. All very interesting and quite annoyingly for me only heard second hand – I normally hide when John gets chatting to anyone and everyone near by when he is setting up. The kids and I huff and moan inside the van and impatiently knock on the windows to hurry him up. Serves me right I suppose for being anti-social. Perhaps I can get John to work on a code so I know when to come out and join the conversation and when to orchestrate a way to get him out of the lengthier more boring chats… That does I know sound very rude, but we have been on the road for nearly 300 days now and have met A LOT of people and told our story A LOT of times already…
Anyway, back to the launch… John’s NASA mate told him that IF the rocket went up (and it was a big IF because even the smallest change in the weather not down here on earth but way up there in space could make the launch impossible) then it would be like the sun coming up very quickly. The rocket was in fact a United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V Rocket and part of NASA’s Magnetosperic Multiscale (MMS) Mission. Due to place “the four-satellite constellation into a highly elliptical orbit, beginning a two-year mission to study reconnection in the magnetosphere “. Not exactly sure what that means – sounds like Rocket Science to me!!! But we were all very excited nonetheless. The Carle’s wheeled their wagon full of food and drink round to our new site and we ate, drank and were generally merry until launch time. As the afternoon had gone on the port had got busier and busier. Cars parked everywhere, hoards of people setting up picnics and BBQ’s all along the harbour’s edge. So it was a really jolly crowd!
Everyone was frantically looking on the NASA website / Facebook page for news of when and if it would go up. We spent hours setting up cameras, video cameras and discussing who would shoot what and how. But when the crowd finally shouted out “3,2,1 Blast off!” we mainly all just stood and stared open mouthed as well, how to describe it… the sun came up in the distance and then carried on up and up and up till we could see it’s ‘tail’ and by then the couple of thousand of us standing on the harbour wall clapped, whooped and cheered. It was truly incredible.
We said a sad farewell to our new friends and blasted off ourselves on Friday. We had noticed an especially high volume of motorbikes on the roads the previous few days and had heard that just up the coast Daytona Beach was hosting it’s annual Bike Week. Wasn’t much chance of us persuading John to bypass this so that is where we were headed.
First we stopped at the 140,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife refuge. 40 miles of undeveloped Florida beach, which seems incredible given how valuable coastline is in the rest of Florida. Ironically when NASA moved in they basically saved the area, so they have a somewhat strange but lovely coexistence. We drove the 7-mile Black Point Wildlife Drive (ignoring the signs warning about it not being suitable for long vehicles). A really beautiful place where we read that there are more endangered and threatened species of wildlife inhabiting the swamps, marshes and hardwood hammocks than at any other site in the US. We also stopped and watched the huge congregation of manatees at the observation deck. Here at the refuge they h have approximately 1/3 of all the manatees on the east coast – 600 of only 3800 on both sides of the US!
So we arrived mid afternoon on the Friday of Bike week in Daytona Beach. There were literally thousands of bikes all over town. The noise was incredible. Signs everywhere saying, “Bikers Welcome” and “We’re glad you’re here!”. We drove through town planning to return the next day and headed to Tomoka State Park where we had booked for the night. So very nice to be back to a quiet, nice campsite. We biked to the end of the inlet and saw the Statue of Chief Tomoki and watched the sun go down which was lovely.
There was nothing to be done but to join in the craziness of Bike Week so on Saturday we drove back to town. This was the last day supposedly so town was even crazier than it had been all week. There were coned off areas of road outside the bars with police parked up. Whole streets closed off and pedestrianized. I think what is probably already a fairly ‘full on’ town was vastly exaggerated by the ½ million bikers that descend on it for this week!
One petrol station was luring in customers by having a team of bikini clad girls offering bike-washing services. There was A LOT of congestion around that particular place!! Interestingly John decided just opposite would be a good place for us to park up and play a round of mini golf complete with the background noise and rumble of motorbikes. Charlie got two holes in one – see low key celebration below…
Daytona Beach opens “The Worlds Most Famous Beach” (really???) for cars to drive down and John was determined Frankie could do it too. So he chatted up one of the ladies who sit in the cabin taking money to actually gain access to the beach and she told him the best stretch for us. So we very tentatively drove down onto the beach and along a mile or so. Very cool, I have to say. The tide was coming in however, and a friendly coast guard recommended we perhaps turn around and exit the beach the way we’d come, as the next stretch was a bit ‘soft’. So we started to do a 3-point turn only to find our front wheels stuck in that very same ‘soft sand’. 20 very long and nerve wracking seconds of negotiation before John managed to free Frankie and we got on our way again. Frankie is wonderful in many ways however, I don’t think she would have been much good after a soaking!!
In the Home of Nascar (started here in 1947) and would dearly love to have caught at a race at the Daytona International Speedway but we had to make do with just driving by and listening to the deafening noise of 100’s of motorbikes making their way round it’s famous track. However, its drag races took place on those same sands we had just driven (and got stuck) on so we felt we’d done what we came for!!
So we left town and headed north to St Augustine, which I was quite, excited about. Founded by the Spanish in 1565 it claims to be the oldest permanent settlement in the US. The guidebook said that the town was not a tourist trap and so we thought it might feel a bit like home – hmmmm, or not!! Some time must have past since that was written. John said it felt like it was perhaps once a really nice place but then had been ‘Disneyfied’ for the tourists. Spot on!! Silly turrets added unnecessarily to buildings and weird fake beams and cobblestones everywhere. Like Eurodisney basically!!
We got into town late afternoon and discovered that randomly they were holding a Celtic Festival. One of the more surreal afternoons of our EFA so far. Wandering around surrounded by 100’s of people wearing kilts, listening to Irish Bands and then watching a full-blown Highland Games. All very odd indeed. To top off the madness we then had dinner in an ‘English’ restaurant where we ate the most disgusting ‘Bangers and Mash’ and had that old classic ‘Strawberries and Cream’ served as mashed up strawberries and squirty cream – arghhhhh time to go!!
Sunday 15th March we backtracked a bit to visit the Fort Matanzas National Monument. This tiny tiny tiny fort was built in 1742 to guard the Matanzas Inlet (the waterway that leads straight up to St Augustine) from British Invasion. Matanzas is Spanish for “slaughters” and refers to the execution of over 250 Frenchmen by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine.
The fabulous National Park Service do a great job here of making a lot of not really very much honestly. They now protect not just the historic fort, but also the wild barrier island and the plants and animals that survive there surrounded by a sea of development. They lay on a free ferry ride, which lasted all of 4 minutes to take you over to the little fort where a Ranger then talks you through the structure and it’s history.
It is the only building in the world built entirely out of coquina, which is mashed up shells and was home to only 8 men at a time. We made the boys do their Ranger Programs, which earned them another badge – you have to take your hat off to the good old NPS for making an educational program about every single one of the National sites. We walked their nature trail and wandered up and down their beach stepping over 1000’s of jellyfish. We also spotted another couple of gopher tortoises on our way, one of who was stuck under some tree roots. William was distraught and insisted we go and rescue him. We settled on leaving him for a while and then checking in on him on our way out – by then he had freed himself thankfully!!
We left there early afternoon to head north, out of Florida and into Georgia. We had been in Florida for 37 days in total which is up there with Texas as one of our longest ‘stops’. We had absolutely loved our time here. For each fabulous thing we saw and did there were at least another 2 or 3 we had to leave on the list for next time! We could have probably spent 6 months here and not done all of the fantastically unique experiences there are to be had here. We loved it and even as I write this a month later we are still talking about whether it would be ridiculous to turn around and go back there for a bit longer. Not bad for a State we weren’t even sure we were going to visit when we set out!!!
Wickenswanderings 