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With my health issues consuming the majority of December through mid March, I was finally feeling good enough to get out and see some of the sights around the Titusville area of Florida. We started out with easy things like the Black Point Wildlife Drive. Part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, we have driven this 7 mile drive previously, but since the wildlife changes over the seasons as well as from day to day, we find it enjoyable to get back here to see what we can find this time.
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| One of Many Ponds Along Black Point Drive |
One advantage to a drive like this is that as long as there are other people out doing the same thing, there are more eyes searching for some of the more elusive animals. If there are a couple cars pulled over to the side of the road, there is a good chance there is something nearby. Often it might just be an alligator that non-Floridians find so special. We have seen so many over the years that unless it is a remarkably large gator, I don’t find them all that interesting. But one of the stops was something we don’t see very frequently - feral pigs. We have done plenty of of hikes through areas where there has been pig activity and they tend to make quite a mess but we generally don’t actually see them in action.
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| A Feral Pig Along Road |
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| Great Blue Heron |
There wasn’t quite as much bird activity as we have seen before, but that’s the luck of the draw. On the way back home, we stop at Sand Point Park on the west side of the Indian River. We had a geocache to find and we took in the nice view of the river and the Max Brewer Bridge.
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| Bridge View from Sand Point Park |
The Great Outdoors has their own Nature Center and one Saturday they had an event with a few local organizations having booths to show off what their site has to offer. We chatted with the guy from the Orlando Wetlands about this place which happens to be one of our favorite bird watching spots in all of our travels. We also learned about an archeological site just behind the Home Depot in town. There was also a clown wandering around to entertain the kids. We really enjoyed getting a chance to see two owls up close and personal. Milo the barred owl was injured as a young nestling and had to have two toes removed to save her life. She now gets to go around to events like this. Mr Frodo is and an eastern screech owl with a damaged eye and ear making his release to the wild impossible.
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| Milo |
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| Mr Frodo |
The nature center had also brought in a food truck with some excellent pulled pork sandwiches and better yet all the proceeds were donated to the center. On the walk back to our site, we stopped by another event at TGO. The car show sounded like a nice idea, but there were fewer than 10 cars and most of them weren’t all that special. The 1959 Morris Mini-Minor was likely the most intriguing car - especially since Chris used to drive a Mini Cooper before we went full time.
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| 1959 Morris Mini-Minor |
One of the things that is neat about living here in Titusville are the frequent rocket launches. Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center are only about 15 crow miles from our site. With all of the SpaceX launches as well as a couple other companies sending up rockets, there seems to be a never ending parade of launches to watch. We typically will have a least one launch every week or so and sometimes we get 2 launches in one day. If a launch happens during our waking hours, we often will just walk to the front of our site and watch them take off. If they launch in the middle of the night, I sometimes will just open a window shade and watch from the comfort of home. Here’s some picture from back to back launches a day apart in mid March.
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| Up, Up, and Away |
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| Another Launch |
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| The Aftermath |
We had wanted to check out some of the sights in the Melbourne Florida area and headed down there on March 17. We had started to tour the area with the help of an Adventure Lab, but while doing it, we stumbled onto a big festival. Two city blocks had been closed off from vehicles and there were stages at each end. In the middle of the festivities was Meg O’Malleys Irish Pub - yep we had found ourselves a Saint Patrick’s Day festival. There were dozens of vendors with all sorts of food and other items for sale although the biggest seller seemed to be beer or other alcoholic drinks.
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| St Patrick's Day Festival in Melbourne |
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| Meg O'Mobile |
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| Kiss Me, I'm Irish |
When we first arrived, there was a band playing Irish music at one stage. We watched for a short time, but their set was just finishing up so we wandered to the other stage, checking out the booths along the way. There was no act in progress there and by the time we made it back to the first stage, a new group was getting ready to perform.
The Magennis Academy of Irish Dance has several dance schools in Florida including one here in Melbourne. It looked like something worth watching so we decided to change our plans and enjoy the show.
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| Younger Kids |
There were at least 2 dozen dancers ranging in age from 5 to 18. The girls outnumbered the boys but by less of a margin than I may have expected. Varying groups would come out and perform a dance. The youngest dancers were possibly the most enjoyable. You could sense they were trying to remember the dance moves and watching the older members as they moved around the stage.
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| Large, Medium and Small |
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| Jump! |
Some of the dances were with tap shoes and standing near the stage where I was, it was fascinating to watch the speed that the feet moved. It reminded me of Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance. Okay, I doubt any of these kids were of his caliber, but it was still an enjoyable 45 minute show.
I’m sure there were more performances upcoming but we headed out and went to the nearby Erna Nixon Park. This is a 50 acre nature preserve with a 2/3 mile boardwalk looping through it. We were looking to get in a walk and there was also an Adventure Lab here to attract us.
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| Boardwalk at Erna Nixon Park |
Much of the walk is shaded so it was fairly pleasant in the hot afternoon sun. They have lots of interpretive signs along the boardwalk pointing out various plants and habitat features. It was a nice way to end the day.
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| Chris Gets Her Wings |
We made it back to Orlando Wetlands Park one more time and during this visit we saw dramatically more wildlife than our stop in November. This trip we spent all of our entire time wandering along the boardwalk.
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| Great Egret |
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| A Limpkin Joins the Crowd |
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| Blue-winged Teal |
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| Common Gallinule |
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| Anhinga Dries Wings |
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| Large Flock Above |
The area was teaming with large numbers of birds and quite a few people too. But birds weren’t the only things out but some of the other animals can take a keen eye to spot since they tend to blend in so well. We saw several varieties of turtles swimming around in the shallow waters.
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| Gator |
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| Roseate Spoonbill |
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| Large Fish |
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| Turtle |
But by far our favorite section of the boardwalk is an area known as the rookery. This is where many of the birds tend to have nests and raise their young until they are able to fly. There were 3 roseate spoonbill nests in close proximity to one another and only 50 feet or so from the boardwalk. Each nest appeared to have two young. We ended up spending most of our 2 hour visit watching the birds in the rookery.
We managed to make it to the Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens in Port Orange Florida. We had tried to visit back in November but it was closed due to hurricane damage but in the intervening months, they had cleared the debris so visitors could come and enjoy this place again.
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| Entrance to Dunlawton |
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| Lizard Atop Head |
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| Likely Hurricane Damage |
The plantation started back in the early 1800’s so there is a fair amount of history here. Sugar cane was the primary crop and some of the old buildings where the cane was processed are still standing. A large metal roof building has been built over the top of the crumbling mill to help protect from the elements. It was neat to see some of the old machinery used to press the cane and the kilns and vats used to process the sap.
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| Covered Sugar Cane Processing Building |
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| Kiln Openings |
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| Large Kettles |
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| Sugar Cane Press |
There are trails that meander through the gardens. They likely only amount to a mile total but there are lots of things to see in the very well maintained gardens.
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| Shell Ginger |
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| Interesting Green Lizard |
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| Lily |
The “Gnome Home” was quite whimsical with dozens of little gnomes scattered around the garden. The trunk of an old tree has been turned into the home with a staircase spiraling around.
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| Gnomes |
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| Staircase on Gnome Home |
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| Front of Gnome Home |
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| A Flower "Bed" |
Another unexpected feature of Dunlawton were some dinosaurs scattered around the trail. Back in the 1950’s, this place was run as a tourist attraction called “Bongoland” and several large statues were created. Over the past 75 years, some of the beasts have broken but there are still a handful of them on the grounds.
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| Watch Out for Dinosaurs |
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| Triceratops |
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| Stegosaurus |
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| Dimetrodon |
We enjoyed the time we spent wandering the gardens and glad they were able to clean up the mess from the last hurricanes.
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| Cathedral Bells |
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| Zebra Longwing |
As our time in Titusville drew to a close we had a few other tasks that needed to be completed. One critical goal was to get replacement tires for the motorhome. We don’t put many miles on them so they are far from worn out. However, they will age out and become less safe which may cause a dangerous blowout. We had already replaced the original tires back in 2018 but that was 7 years ago. Depending on who you believe, the tires should be replaced in the 5 to 10 year range. Friends from TGO had mentioned using a business called National Tire Concierge Services to get their last set of replacement tires. It sounded like a promising route so we gave them a call and told them exactly what we were looking for. A couple weeks later, we were informed they were in and we could head to a tire shop 20 miles away in Cocoa. There was a bit of a mixup and the wrong tires were ordered and installed before we realized the error. Fortunately, the proper tires were rushed in and after a second visit, we are set with new tires.
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| Awaiting New Tires |
One other project that I hoped to have completed this winter was to deal with the ugly plastic coating on the front of the rig. When these motorhomes are built, a product called Diamond Shield is applied to the front of the coach below the windshield. It is a tough plastic that is in theory will help reduce paint damage from stones and other road debris. In general it had worked well for the first 10 or 11 years. But often, the product starts to fail in a way that allows some sort of mold to grow between the back of the plastic and the paint. I had hoped that since ours was looking good after 10 years that maybe ours was going to be one of the few without the issue. But a couple years ago, I started to notice small areas of discoloration and no amount of cleaning the outer surface helped. Since then the stuff has spread quickly and makes the front of the coach look quite bad.
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| Mold Quite Visible and Ugly! |
There are several businesses that specialize in removing the coating and the adhesive that adheres it to the paint. But they run around $3000 to $3500, so I watched countless YouTube videos showing the professionals removing it as well as many normal people. The process looked quite tedious and time consuming but far from brain surgery. With an inexpensive plastic chisel and some 180 grit sandpaper, I started one small are around the lights to get a sense for just how easy (or hard) the job was going to be. With some trial and error, I found the technique for peeling off the Diamond Shield - sometimes in schnibbles but often in larger strips. By sharpening the chisel frequently on the sandpaper to keep a razor sharp edge, I made some decent progress in just a few hours.
The residual glue takes a solvent and more effort to remove. I know they sell some powerful (and toxic) solvents to remove the glue but I found that normal rubbing alcohol worked reasonably well and is relatively safe to work with. Here is the “after” photo of the same area I started on.
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| Looking Good |
I find that my attention span for the job lasts a couple hours but by then my hands are a bit cramped so I will give it a rest and continue the next day. The good news is that for the most part it is coming off and the underlying paint looks great and that is even before waxing the area.
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| Scraping Off Diamond Shield |
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| Driver's Side Before |
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| Driver's Side After |
Two days before we are planning to head out Chris comes up with one last job for me to do. The guy that was renting the lot next to us had just left and the owner stopped by to pressure wash his concrete pad. When he was done, Chris went over to ask if we could rent his equipment to try cleaning ours. For the cost of gas and a homemade load of bread, he dropped off the pressure washer and the special surface cleaner attachment. I knew there were a couple of areas that needed cleaning but I really didn’t think ours looked that dirty but I went along with the plan and moved our rig off the site and went to work.
It didn’t take long before I realized just how dirty the driveway was. I have no idea how long it had been since it was cleaned but it likely was at least 2 years ago. The surface cleaner did a much better job than I could have done with the hand wand and nozzle and in a couple hours it was bright looking.
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| Before |
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| During Shows Lots of Dirt! |
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| After |
