Titusville Conclusion

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With Christmas over, we have just over a week before we head out of The Great Outdoors (TGO). Usually when we are approaching the end of a longer stay at a spot, we attempt to cram in all the remaining things to see and do in the short period of time we have left. But this time we don’t feel obligated to even worry about that since we will end up owning a lot here within a few weeks and will have plenty of opportunities to explore in the future visits to Titusville.

One nearby place we stopped at for a short time a week ago was Orlando Wetlands Park. We had been amazed at the number of birds and other animals that we felt we should go back for a longer visit and this time I brought along my DSLR and long telephoto lens. We had learned that there seemed to be much more activity when walking along the boardwalk so we head there first. I suspect this is likely because the boardwalk winds across the middle of one of the ponds so visitors are placed right in the middle of things.

We slowly made our way along the boardwalk which is around a half mile long and we’re not disappointed by the quantity and diversity of wildlife to see.

Turtle and Alligator Have Staring Contest

Black-bellied Whistling Duck

Common Gallinule

Over the years, I have gotten pretty good at Florida bird identification - at least the more prominent ones. So I was familiar with the majority of the birds we saw either wading, swimming, flying or just perched in a tree or on the boardwalk.

Snowy Egret on the Prowl

Hawk Watches Intently from Above

Roseate Spoonbill in Flight

Tricolored Heron

There was one species that we saw quite a few of that looked like an ibis, but instead of being white like they typically are, this one appeared to be black. As I studied the pictures later and used an app to help figure it out, these birds actually have some iridescent greens and reds which helped to determine they are glossy ibis.

Glossy Ibis

Great Blue Heron

Little Blue Heron

The gators seemed to be out in good numbers too. Many of them were smaller ones but there was one large adult that was just a few yards from the boardwalk laying on the knees of a cypress tree.

Big Gator Near Boardwalk

After exiting the far end of the boardwalk, we continued our walk along the various roads that meander through the park and help to form the various ponds and marshes. There is one hill that was likely from the spoils from the construction of the wetlands. It isn’t that high of a hill but it does provide for a decent view in all directions.

View from the Hill

Butterfly Pauses

As we were working our way back to the parking lot, we came up on some animal laying in the grass on the bank of a pond. From a distance, I was having trouble identifying it since it seemed to have an unusual shape. But after getting closer, I realized it was simply another alligator. The unexpected thing about this one was it was missing a pretty good portion of its tail. A closer view confirmed it was a wound as opposed to some abnormality, but from the looks of it, the injury has started to heal over pretty well.

Injured Gator

A Closeup of Tail Wound

TGO is about 17 miles from the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center. There seem to be fairly frequent rocket launches. A few days before New Years, there was going to be a double header launch. The first one being a Falcon Heavy - the bigger SpaceX rocket - shortly after 8 PM. And then 3 hours later, a Falcon 9 was to launch taking more Starlink satellites into space. I had caught another launch earlier in our stay and didn’t have a chance to photograph it. This time I headed out with the hopes of seeing it and getting some pictures.

A Nearly Full Moon Awaits the Launch

It was definitely loud and fairly obvious in the night sky. Even with my 500 mm lens, it doesn’t fill up much of the frame, but I think I got some decent shots. Several minutes later, the reusable booster rockets return to Earth. In some ways, this was even more unusual because the patterns created are more like fireworks that go on for over a minute.

Rocket on the Move

A Thin Layer of Clouds

Booster Rocket Art

Port Canaveral is about a 25 mile drive from TGO. We are not into cruises. In fact we have never gone on a cruise nor are we in the least curious about taking one. Maybe a river cruise in Europe would be interesting but a Caribbean cruise just doesn’t sound like much fun to us. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t curious about the actual cruise ships. We picked a day where there were to be several ships departing over a short time period one afternoon and headed to Port Canaveral to check them out. We arrived early enough to walk around the area before the ships were scheduled to depart.

Wonder of the Seas

A Royal Caribbean Ship

We walked all over the area finding a few geocaches hidden nearby. Exploration Tower sounded like a fun thing to visit but it is undergoing a maintenance project and was closed. The outside visual of the building is pretty remarkable, looking like a large boat standing on end. There is a huge cargo terminal across the port. There wasn’t any action taking place but it was still impressive. There are all sorts of restaurants, bars and shops.

Exploration Tower

Cargo Terminal

Red Lionfish

It is also a popular place for fishing. There were dozens of people along the edge of the dock trying to catch a big one. There was one large charter boat that came back while we were waiting for the cruise ships to leave. The catch of the day seemed to be small sharks which seemed a bit unusual. Plenty of birds were around the area waiting for the fishermen to toss out their scraps. One wood stork had somehow stolen a fish that looked way too big to swallow whole, but it persevered and managed to gulp it down. The sign near the cleaning stations around the dock didn’t make sense to me. Why do we need to poke the eyes of the fish? Turns out the eyes will fill with gases causing the fish carcasses to float - both an eyesore and smelly. Who knew?

Pelicans at Dock

Wood Stork with Large Fish

Unusual Sign

For some unknown reason, all the cruise ships seemed to be delayed in their departure time. We were trying to wait patiently since we wanted to see them but the sun was starting to set and it was getting a bit chilly.  But finally, two of them cast off and started the slow journey past us. These folks were going to be celebrating the New Years on their cruise.

Cruise Ships Across the Port

A Disney Cruise

Adventure of the Seas Departs

We had a low key New Year’s Eve but that meant we could manage a bike ride the following day. We headed back to the East Central Regional Rail Trail. In the last blog post, I talked about the ride from Titusville to almost Maytown. This time we headed to the parking lot in Maytown where to the south is Titusville, to the west is Enterprise and to the north is Edgewater. We opted for the route to the west. It is 20 miles to the town of Enterprise so we knew that was too far but we figured we could bike about half way there. It was a pretty ride with some of it being adjacent to country roads and other parts feeling rather remote. One home along the way had all sorts of odd statues and contraptions around their yard. I wanted to stop and explore, but it wasn’t clear the owner would want visitors so I was limited to those things near the bike bath. We turned around at the 10.5 mile mark and had an equally pleasant ride back to the car getting in a 21 mile bike ride.

Heading Out Rail Trail

Small Pond Along the Path

Unexpected Yard Art

We take a day off then head out for a more leisurely bike ride. We head back to what is becoming one of our favorite nearby spots - Orlando Wetland Park. This is our 3rd visit so far but in order to cover ground more quickly, we bring the bikes. For the most part, the gravel roads here are in excellent shape. One of the geocaches we were working on during our ride took us to a different trail along the north side of the park. It looks like it is a section of the Florida Trail. We might need to investigate this trail for future hiking.

Large Pond in Orlando Wetlands Park

Section of Florida Trail

We definitely didn’t see very many people out this far from the parking lot, so it was kind of peaceful. Every now and then, we would see some birds and stop to check them out.

Marshy Area

Limpkin

Ibis with Flock of Ducks

At one stop looking at a bird and alligator, we noticed something else scurrying around. It was an otter that was playing in a small pond on one side of the road before rushing across the road and diving into the pond on the other side and disappearing.

Otter

As we got to the western edge of the park, there was a lot of activity taking place. They appear to be putting in a new pond area or at least reworking one of the existing ones. There was a large excavator sitting ten or more feet below the level of the road. It was sculpting the ground to form various levels. Every now and then a large dump truck would arrive and get filled up with a load and head elsewhere to dump it. The odd thing was the large number of birds standing in the newly exposed earth not that far from the excavator. Apparently there was something tasty being exposed and they wanted first dibs at it.

New Area Under Development

Dirt Removal

At the southwestern corner of the property was a boardwalk that was over one of the inlet ports to the wetland. There was a strong chemical smell to the water at this part of the park. I suspect that when the excavation is complete in the other section, there will be a water inlet turned on to fill it up as well. We really enjoyed the bike ride here. It was just a bit over 8 miles and we got a chance to see a lot more of the park much more easily than via hiking.

Water Inlet

Boardwalk Near Inlet

Our time in Titusville was coming to a close but we headed out for what looked like an interesting place for another bike ride at Fox Lake Park. The actual park isn’t all that large with a loop road, restrooms, shelters, playgrounds and boat launch for Fox Lake. The park itself didn’t seem all that interesting but there is a wilderness area just to the west of the park that has many miles of multi use trails. There are a series of geocaches hidden along the trails so we figured it would be a fun time. We parked near the boat launch and found the trail over to the wilderness area. The “road” we found was nothing like what we were expecting. It was plenty wide but varied between long grass, muddy or standing water. There were very few stretches where it was sufficiently dry to make for a good bike ride. We barely made it half a mile to the south before we decided that it only looked to be getting wetter conditions and riding in it was very challenging and not much fun.

Very Wet and Muddy Road

The road to the west was actually fairly good. It was mostly dry and hard packed sand that was much easier to pedal the bikes on. The only downside was after a mile of pleasant riding, we came upon a gate across the road. There were cattle on the other side and no trespassing signs so we knew to turn back. A decent size turtle was taking advantage of the dry road to get around the area as well.

A Drier Road to the West

Turtle on the Move

We were running out of roads to try. All that remained was the one to the north. This one was fairly dry but did have some larger puddles to get around. We managed okay for another mile or so and even found a geocache hidden up that direction. But alas, we were turned back by more flooded and muddy roads.

Road Requires a Boat

On the short section of wooded trail back to Fox Lake Park we’re some of the most vibrant mushrooms we have ever seen. There were many clumps of them but they only seemed to be in one small area along the trail.

Vibrant Mushrooms

Back in the park, we decided to bike the road thru the park since our intended ride turned out to be a bust. We will need to check back at drier times to see if the roads in the wilderness area are ever dry enough for riding bikes.

Fox Lake

Well our month at TGO turned out quite well. It was a very nice place. Nice enough that in a couple weeks we will have closed on our lot. Unfortunately since we had already reserved other spots for most of the rest of winter, we will just continue as we had planned and move on to our next destination for 6 weeks - Bushnell Florida.