Showing posts with label Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2014

CANAVERAL NATIONAL SEASHORE

We visited the longest stretch of preserved coastline on the east coast of Florida.  Over 57,000 acres of undeveloped beach with a thousand species of plants and birds.  This was our first visit and we sighted an alligator, otter and lots of birds.  The sun was shining and the temps were in the low 70's .. it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed a two mile nature hike.

Our first visit

Beautiful beaches

Spotted this guy as we were driving through the park
Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is where we needed to go to have our National Park book stamped and we were happily surprised with what the refuge had to offer.  The visitor's center closed at 4PM and we had just enough time to watch their 20-minute video.  We walked along their boardwalk and that's when we spotted the second alligator sunning himself.

This was a nice 2-mile loop


Enjoying the sunshine
I used my Yelp app to locate a local diner and found one on the river's edge.  I had a grilled grouper sandwich called a Groupen because it was like a Rueben on marble bread, swiss cheese and coleslaw. Denis got the broiled redfish sandwich.

Everything was home made including the coleslaw and potato salad

This is the restaurant that Yelp rated with 4 stars
We made a u-turn at this park when I spotted this cluster of birds

Before leaving the campground this morning I saw mom, dad and baby Sandhill crane
That's all folks!  Thanks for stopping in.