Out of Our Rut: Off to the Space Coast

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We really enjoyed our 12 night stay in St Augustine but we have reservations about one hundred miles south in Titusville Florida - an area known as the Space Coast given its proximity to Cape Canaveral. We have never camped on this part of the state so it will be somewhere new for us to explore. This stop will also bring us to a style of camping we don’t typically go for - a resort. Over the past seven plus years, we have stayed at dozens of campgrounds that have the word “resort” in their name. For the vast majority of them, that terminology is a bit of a stretch and is simply marketing. I can count on one hand, the campgrounds we have stayed at that I would truly consider worthy of being called resorts. We are much more inclined to stay at a state park campground or an Elks Lodge during our travels.

So why did we choose The Great Outdoors Resort (TGO) in order to visit this part of the state? Well there aren’t any state parks in this part of Florida so that wasn’t an option. There is a perfectly good Elks Lodge in Titusville with several camping sites with water and electric that could have worked for a weeklong stay to explore the area or there are numerous other private campgrounds we likely could have reserved if we wanted to stay a couple weeks. The truth is, we had an ulterior motive for staying at TGO. We wanted to determine whether this is a place we might consider buying an RV lot at! And what better way to experience a place than to rent a site within the community.

TGO is an ownership park. Each of the 1625 properties within the resort is privately owned. Each owner is free to rent out their site if they are not staying at TGO or there is a rental service that owners can utilize to have their empty site rented out to travelers passing thru the area. During the “high season” in Florida (November thru April) the rental office charges $100 per day for short term rentals! We had decided to take advantage of the discount offered by booking for a full month - if you call $84 per night a deal.

We arrived at TGO and drove up to the gated entrance about 1/2 mile down the road and tell the guard we are here for a campsite rental. He checked his list, gave us directions and opened the gate for us. The rental office is another mile and a half inside the grounds. We go in to let them know we had arrived and be given directions to our rental site. We backed in and got everything setup for our stay. It looked like a fairly nice site and should be a good base for us to learn about the park and see how we like it here.

At Our Site in TGO

For the past several months, Chris has been tracking the various lots within TGO that are on the market. Over the next few weeks, we will wander past most of them to evaluate their appeal and determine which ones might be worth further consideration. I will get more into that aspect of our stay in the next blog post since there will be a lot of things to explain about our TGO experience.

A Red-shouldered Hawk Perched on Neighbor's RV

One day trip is to the nearby Enchanted Forest Sanctuary. Part of the county park system, this 470 acre forest has a large visitor center, several miles of trails an a couple geocaches. One of the cache containers is actually inside the visitor center sitting inconspicuously on a shelf. We knew we were in search of something related to a gnome and there would be a bit of a trick to actually open the container. We spotted a small log cabin looking box that we surmised was what we were searching for. It took us several minutes of playing around with it to figure out how to release a latch allowing the door to open. This was a cute container and probably wise to be kept inside out of the elements.

Gnome Cache Opened

Stuffed Pig

We head out on some of the trails to explore the park and look for a more traditional looking geocache. The trails were quite varied from sandy paths in scrub areas to pine needle lined trails under the forest canopy to a boardwalk thru a marshy area. We enjoyed the few miles we hiked, found the cache and had our lunch at one of the benches overlooking a butterfly garden.

Along a Trail at Enchanted Forest

Boardwalk

Fungus

Butterfly Garden at Enchanted Forest

A section of the old Addison/Ellis canal from the early 1900’s ended here when the equipment of the day was unable to penetrate the coquina limestone ridge that runs thru the present day park. Some of the old pieces of coquina are scattered about the park. There was also a small enclosure by the parking lot with a couple of gopher tortoises calling this spot home. Both of them were out of their burrows and basking in the sun. It’s a nice park and worth spending a couple hours exploring.

Holey Coquina

Gopher Tortoise

Another day trip would bring us into downtown Titusville. We had several geocaches and an Adventure Lab to accomplish. The combination of these would work well as a tour guide for some of the more interesting highlights of downtown. There were several murals around town. One of them was really well done and painted in such a way that it truly looked like the objects were three dimensional. The historic Pritchard House is a neat Queen Anne style house from 1891. It is possible to tour the inside if you plan ahead and call the number. We had to be satisfied with simply walking around the grounds.

Mural with 3D Effect

Pritchard House

Chris Grows Wings

Other stops along the way included some at Space View Park. This was a rather large park with dozens of monuments and displays from all the various space programs that launched from Cape Canaveral just across the Indian River Lagoon.

Space View Park

Vehicle Assembly Building 9 Miles Away

Bridge Over Indian River

There were monuments for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttles. Plus every astronaut has a small plaque, bust or hand prints in concrete to commemorate their missions. There was a lot to see in the park and we spent a fair amount of time reading about all the space history that took place here. As we were heading back to the car, we passed the Indian River RV Park. It is only about the size of a city block and has room for a couple dozen rigs. While the sites looked to be rather tight, it is definitely in a very urban setting within walking distance of all the businesses in the downtown area.

Mercury Monument

Gemini Monument

Apollo Monument

Space Shuttle Monument

Indian River RV Park

We have definitely been enjoying the Adventure Lab aspect of geocaching that we only started doing this past summer. They do tend to act as tour guides in a way that normal geocaches can’t. There was one of these just west of TGO in the town of Christmas Florida. Given this holiday is just around the corner, we head out one day to check the place out.
Our first stop was at Orlando Wetlands Park. We only needed to get some information from a sign at the entrance kiosk near the parking lot, but when we saw the map for the grounds, we decided to “call an audible” and spend some time wandering the trails. Turns out this place is big - 1650 acres. It is part of Orlando’s reclaimed water program.

Orlando Wetlands Park

Visitor Center

The place is full of large shallow ponds that attracts birds like crazy. We walked a path past a large building that seems like it is still under construction. There is a long boardwalk that leads over one of the pools. We were amazed by the quantity and variety of birds to watch.

Boardwalk at Orlando Wetlands

Common Gallinule

Halfway along the boardwalk, a large group of visitors were stopped to watch a bald eagle put on a show overhead. It went on dozens of flights where it would drop down near the surface of the pond. I only saw it actually strike at the water once and came up empty. It seemed like it was doing some practice dives instead of actually hunting for fish.

As we continued on the boardwalk, we spotted a lot of coots, anhingas, herons, egrets, gators and turtles. We would have liked to stay longer but we figure this place is close enough to TGO that we could come back again. So we head out to complete the Adventure Lab we had started when we got sidetracked.

Small Gator

Coots

Anhinga

Great Blue Heron

Egret

Night Heron

The next stop on our tour was at the nearby Fort Christmas Historical Park. This park includes a replica of a fort originally built on December 25, 1837 during the Second Seminole War which explains where it got its name. Today, the town near the park is known as Christmas Florida. The visitor center was closed when we arrived but we still were able to walk around the grounds. Of course there is a big red mailbox specifically for mail to Santa.

Visitor Center at Fort Christmas

Santa's Mail

There are several restored structures from the area from early 1900’s. One other new building was in the middle of construction and there was a group of people working on the framing. The other building are open to the public and they are interesting to walk through since they were all furnished with period pieces. There were lots of Christmas decorations but it wasn’t clear if they were up because that holiday is less than a week away or if it’s simply because of the name of the place and they keep the tree and lights up year round.

Ready for Christmas

Old Stove

Old Tractors

Classroom

The replica fort was in great shape given it was built in the 1970’s. The fort has several rooms with a great number of displays. There were even some videos to watch to learn about its history.

Approaching the Fort

Old Toys

Wagon Wheel

Beyond the fort, were a few other buildings to explore. It was interesting that all the buildings were wide open. A squirrel was acting like we were intruding in its home as we entered the one building. We enjoyed checking out the interior and seeing the belongings of some of the former residents from Christmas.

Squirrel at Home

Old Washing Machine

At the one corner of the park were some of the animal pens. The chicken coop was empty but there were 2 goats that seem to be permanent residents of the park. We finished up the park and the stages of the Adventure Lab and headed back to TGO having had a nice day

Goat Chilling

We asked some of the neighbors near us if they knew of any good Xmas light displays in the area. We were told one of the streets within TGO had a pretty decent display, but when we checked it out, we discovered it wasn’t what we were looking for. Maybe we were jaded since we had just experienced the wonderful lights in St Augustine. We did some online searches and stumbled onto some reviews about a neighborhood on the north side of Titusville that supposedly had a great light display. The area is Sherwood Estates and the one particular house we wanted was on Bowstring Court, but it sounded like there were several blocks of homes to go see. We headed out after dinner to determine if we could find the place.

When we were still a quarter mile away, we weren’t too optimistic. There were sporadic homes decorated with lights but they weren’t what we were hoping for. As we made the turn onto a side street that would get us to our destination, we realized we were in the right place. There were dozens of cars parked along the neighborhood streets and probably 200 people walking around. We found a place to park and started to explore.

Reindeer Barn

We hadn’t made it up to Bowstring Court yet, but some of these homes were completely covered with lights and displays. There were a few homes that had the displays not just in the front of the house but in the backyard as well. It seemed a bit strange to have hundreds of people wandering thru your property each night during the holidays, but it was clear many of the owners were really into it.

Let it Snow?

Religious Theme

We made the turn onto Bowstring Court and realized we must be on the right track. There were even more people wandering around this cul-de-sac with about 10 homes lining the street. At the far end of the road was a bright glow. It turns out the guys that lives at the far end of the road has been putting up Xmas lights for 30 years. It has grown so much that it takes him 3 months to install them all - several hundred thousand of them!

Arriving at Winning House

Wall of Lights on Left

It was completely overwhelming to walk around this guy’s property. One end of the property had a wall of lights that was probably 16 feet tall and 45 feet wide. He had the lights displaying various images sort of like an oversized TV screen or Jumbotron.

Guards at Entrance

In the driveway next to his house were six musicians playing Christmas carols on trombone! We spent a great deal of time just slowly wandering around trying to soak it all in. We have seen some pretty good Xmas light displays at private homes over the years, but I can’t remember anything quite this over the top.

Brass Band

Looking Back at Main Xmas Display

We worked our way back to the car and as we were driving out we drove thru some other neighborhood streets and found some more displays. One particular group of homes was worth our stopping and getting out for a closer look.