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About 8 weeks ago, when we had biked the sand of New Smyrna Beach, we saw the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse across the water. That reminded us of what a great time we had exploring the beautiful grounds, many buildings and the lighthouse itself. But there is also another attraction located next door to the lighthouse - the Historic Pacetti Hotel. Unfortunately when we visited the lighthouse back in November of 2024, we arrived too late in the day to tour the hotel. A word of advice for others - plan your visit so you can see both places at the same time. There isn’t a reduced package price to tour both, but it will save on the travel time. But to some degree, our poor planning that first time gave us a better tour of the hotel this time. When Chris had investigated the days and hours the hotel is open, she stumbled upon the fact that the hotel occasionally has docent led tours and one was taking place on an upcoming Thursday morning. It’s a little over an hour’s drive from TGO to the hotel so we plan out a day trip up to the Port Orange area of Florida.
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| Pacetti Hotel |
The Pacetti Hotel is located on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Halifax River. The nearest bridge across the river is over 5 miles to the north. We plan our departure to allow us to stop at Ponce Preserve about half way down to the hotel. This preserve is about 40 acres and extends the half mile between the two bodies of water. On the ocean side is the parking lot and a mile or so of sandy trails. There is access to the beach but we don’t have time to go that far. We do make it to the observation tower and find the geocache located along the trails.
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| View from Observation Tower at Ponce Preserve |
Across a road from the parking lot is a long boardwalk out to the river. There is also a kayak launch here but it was low tide, so it was pretty much just muck surrounded by mangroves. We had time to walk to the end of the boardwalk and check out the river views.
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| Boardwalk at Ponce Preserve |
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| Halifax River |
We head down to the lighthouse parking lot and visitor center where we buy our tickets for the Pacetti Hotel. We ask if the guided tour was still on and we’re told yes. It a few hundred yards walk to the hotel. It was 15 minutes before the tour was to start, so we wander around the outside. There was a large banner on the side of the hotel that read “when we’re hot we’re reds hot”. It wasn’t clear if it was some reference to red hots (as in the type of frankfurter) of the Cincinnati Reds but we will discover the meaning when we head in for the tour.
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| Entrance Gate at Pacetti Hotel |
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| Dock at Hotel |
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| Another Hotel View |
Our docent met us near the entrance to the hotel. We chatted with her while we waited for others to join us. She lives locally now and is widowed and wanted something to do to occupy some of her time so now she volunteers here and at the lighthouse. She and her husband used to travel in an RV so we had lots of stories to share with one another. When the tour time rolled around, we were the only ones there. It was nice to get a personalized tour and not have to deal with a large group and being able to see or hear about the place. The property has a long history and started out as a home back in the 1860’s before expanding and becoming more of a hotel. We tour from room to room and learn all about the hotel’s history.
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| Downstairs Fireplace |
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| Guest Room |
When we head upstairs, we learn about the meaning of the banner hanging outside. It turns out that during the early 1930’s, the hotel was abandoned and had fallen into disrepair. In 1936, Olivia Gamble of Procter and Gamble (based in Cincinnati) fortune purchased the hotel and began a restoration project. It was used as a winter home for her and her friends. It later was willed to a family member that eventually became owner of the Cincinnati Reds in the early 1970’s. That was the timeframe of the baseball team winning back to back World Series and the hotel became a retreat for the team during spring training. Having spent years in Cincinnati, it was fascinating to see the connection to so many familiar names. There is a large display of memorabilia from those Reds championship teams which was fascinating since I was living in Ohio during those years and even had some of the commemorative Hudepohl beer cans in my collection.
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| Lighthouse Seen from Upstairs Bedroom |
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| Cincinnati Reds Memorabilia |
Here is the link to the blog post with the details of the nearby lighthouse that should be visited as well when in the area. It was one of the best lighthouse museums we have seen.
We enjoyed the thorough tour and personalized touch but it was lunchtime and we had plans to eat at Aunt Catfish’s on the River up in Port Orange. We had tried this place before and found it to be really good. Most meals also include the all you can eat fixings and fresh cinnamon rolls. You definitely don’t come out of here hungry.
After lunch, we feel the need to at least walk off some of the calories so we headed over to the nearby Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens. The have visited this place before, there always seems to be something new in bloom, so it doesn’t feel like a repeat.
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| Vibrant Red Flower |
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| Queen's Tears Bromeliad |
There aren’t enough trails to get in a super long hike but we still enjoyed the visit. There were a couple of plants that caught my eye simply because they look to be quite dangerous.
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| Watch Out for Thorns |
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| Tree Huggers Should Avoid This One |
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| The Gnomes Are Home |
A few days later we would head to Little Big Econ State Forest. We have been there over a year ago to attend a geocaching event with a friend visiting from Rochester New York. From the discussions with the local cachers, it sounded like there was some excellent hiking and great caches in this park but we hadn’t bothered to try it out until now. Apparently named for the two rivers that run into the area - the Little Econlockhatchee and the Econlockhatchee River. This state forest covers several thousand acres and has around 30 miles of trails and a few dozen geocaches hidden. It is located 20 miles northwest of Titusville and in my mind I was picturing this remote forest in the middle of nowhere. It turns out the nearest city of Oviedo is rather large and may be considered a suburb of Orlando. We had chosen the western side of the park near the Barr Street entrance and the parking lot at the trailhead likely holds 100 cars and it was nearly full. Given it was a beautiful Sunday morning and this near Orlando, maybe we should have anticipated there being a crowd. There is a day use fee, but at least this one has a way to pay online before we head out.
We hadn’t really planned our exact hiking route. Many of the geocaches are either field puzzles or multi-caches so where they might lead us is uncertain. We start out heading across the Florida Trail along the northern edge of the Econ River. It was a nice hike and the trail was in excellent shape although I bet the area gets flooded or at least quite muddy during the rainy season.
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| Gator Along River |
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| New Bridge on Trail |
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| Nice Econ River View |
After about 3 miles of hiking we had made it to a major north-south trail that actually has a bridge over the Econ River. We cross over and find a picnic table to enjoy lunch. We had found a few caches and had some more that were intended to be a field puzzles but we knew we could solve them in the comfort of our home instead of wasting time along the side of the trail on such a nice day. The trails in the park are multi-use. There were a large number of mountain bikers riding past our picnic spot. It appears the majority of the biking trails are on the south side of the river. We go and find a cache on this side of the river before heading north on the Flagler Trail before coming back across the Kokokee Trail. We managed to hike nearly 7.5 miles, find 4 geocaches and had a wonderful time. Other than right at the trailhead and near our lunch spot, we really didn’t run into that many other people on the trails. I guess when the park is this large, a few hundred people out on the trails is a rather small number. Given some of the caches we need to work on at home, it’s clear we will be heading back.
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| Turtles Sunning on Log |
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| Bridge Over Econ River |
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| Here Comes the Gator's Next Meal! |
Being early March, we start to plan where 2026 will take us once we leave Florida for the season. For the past 3 years, we have been on the eastern half of the country. We spent a full summer back in Western New York, another summer in the New England states and this past summer in the upper Midwest. A lot of the decision to stay east was based on us purchasing our RV lot at The Great Outdoors in Titusville Florida. The map below shows the past 3 years worth of camping stops since leaving the desert southwest. We have definitely enjoyed most of our stops in that time, but we are itching to get back out west, so with that in mind we put together a plan. I will use a future post to get into the details but so far we have planned stops in South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona.
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| Stops from Last 3 Years |
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| Tentative Plans for 2026 |
Besides working on travel plans, we had solved many of the puzzle caches we were looking at in Little Big Econ, so a week or so after being there, we head back. This time we start at the eastern side of the park off Snow Hill Road - definitely an oxymoron for this part of Florida. We start out at what looks to be the equestrian parking area not far from the park’s maintenance area.
There is yet another puzzle at the parking lot so we attempt to see if we can figure it out before we set off on our hike in case the final hiding location is along our route. The name of the cache was “Tedious” for good reason. At the posted location was an informational plaque describing the cattlemen that lived and worked in this part of Florida. The cache description has a series of 200+ numbers in groups of 4. We suspect that these numbers are somehow used with the text on the sign to determine the final coordinates for the cache. Fortunately we had printed out the numbers so we could write our solution down. We guessed that each group of 4 was meant to pinpoint a letter on the sign. We tried the first few and sure enough it looked like treating the 4 numbers as identifying which side of the sign, which line of the text, which word of that line and which letter of that word would produce something meaningful. Of course it was a hot sunny morning so standing by the sign tediously counting over and over didn’t sound fun. So we took some pictures of the sign and went back to the car where we could be out of the sun and with Chris reading off numbers and my looking at the pictures, we eventually came up with a solution that looked promising and could be worked into the route with the other caches we wanted to attempt. So off we went.
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| Iris |
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| Little Blue Heron |
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| Bend in the Econ River |
Our route took us across some of the equestrian trails which aren’t in bad shape but tended to be in full sun. We finally made it back over to the north-south Flagler Trail where we’re were a few days ago. This time we stayed north of the river, doing some of the same trails along the river. We only found 3 geocaches in our 7.1 mile hike. Some of the puzzles we believed to have solved at home, must not have been correct so it wasn’t a complete success. But it was an another fun time in the park.
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| Chia Gator? |
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| Big Gator Below |
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| Turtle |
Last year in Florida, we had gone into Melbourne and stumbled upon a St Patrick’s Day festival. It was fun so this year we plan to head there on purpose and see more of the activities. The day starts out with a parade through a section of downtown. There was already a large crowd in the area near Meg O’Malley’s Irish Pub where the bulk of the other activities take place on a couple different stages setup on the several blocks of closed streets. Even at 10 AM there were people drinking green beer! We wandered through the crowd and made our way to the parade route. Some of the early highlights was a visit by none other than St Patrick as well as a large bagpipe troupe.
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| Color Guard Starts Parade in Melbourne |
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| Saint Patrick |
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| Bagpipers |
Of course there were lots of police and fire departments driving by with their sirens and lights.
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| Armored Vehicle |
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| Vintage Fire Truck |
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| Choo Choo Float |
There were various school groups, floats and a large number of Corvette owners with some late models and some very old ones. The last high school group was a marching band from a nearby high school. Even their name declares them as the “Marching Bears”. The only problem was, this band was riding on a float. They still played music as they rolled by but there was no marching taking place. It took about 45 minutes for all the participants to go past. It was a lot smaller than the Titusville Christmas parade but still fun to watch.
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| Holy Name of Jesus Grade School Cheerleaders |
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| 1960's Corvette |
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| The Non-Marching Marching Bears |
After the parade, we follow the crowds back to the main event area. The place was definitely packed now. It was barely 11:30 but we had a show we wanted to see at noon so we head into the big food tent sponsored by Meg O’Malleys to get a quick lunch before the line was too long which gave us time to eat and make it to the show. The show we wanted to watch was by the same group that we saw performing last year. The Magennis Academy of Irish Dance has a few dozen dancers ranging in age from about 5 to 18.
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| Magennis Academy Dancers |
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| Jumping for Joy |
They performed a wide variety of dance numbers. Sometimes was just a handful of dancers and other times there were a dozen or more dancing together.
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| Ready to Take a Bow |
We got a kick out of watching them. Maybe not as much as the girl below did - she definitely got some air in her dance routine.
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| Impressive Kick |
There were other groups that would be performing throughout the afternoon and we debated about staying to watch some other acts. But we had seen a billboard on the drive down that advertised a strawberry festival in Palm Bay. When we checked the map, it was only about 15 miles from Melbourne so we decided to head there. We made good time until we were a quarter mile away. Then we sat in traffic that was barely moving, waiting to turn into the only road that leads into and out of Fred Poppe Regional Park. We found a parking spot at another section of the park that didn’t have many cars and then we walked to the event. It was easy to tell where it was but a lake pond made the walk a fairly long one. Then when we got to the entrance, we discovered there was a $7 admission fee.
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| We're On the Wrong Side of the Pond |
There were quite a few vendors selling all sorts of things but there wasn’t a strawberry theme with any of them. There were also plenty of of food trucks but we already had lunch. We saw some sort of performance taking place near the middle of the festival so we go there first to see what was going on. When we got there, a young woman was doing all sorts of acrobatics in a large hoop suspended by a 25 foot tall tripod of sorts. She was quite talented and never fell off the thing even though it looked like she should.
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| Row of Vendors at Strawberry Festival |
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| Aerial Acrobatics |
The sign on the tent was “Cirque by the Sea”. They are a family of acrobatic performers with a pirate theme and a fair amount of slapstick comedy interwoven in their acts. We found an open spot in the bleachers and sat to watch the rest of the show. It was entertaining.
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| More Hoop Work |
When the show was over, we continued to walk around the grounds to see what else was going on. In one corner was a “monster truck” driving around a very short course. They were offering rides in the truck for a fee. It didn’t look like something we needed to try but there were a fair number of people waiting in line for their turn.
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| Monster Truck Rides |
Maybe the best thing we saw was the small petting zoo set up on the grounds. Goats, sheep, pigs and cows were all displayed in their small pens. Buy some food if you want them to eat from your hands.
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| Goat |
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| Calf |
After covering the whole festival, the only other thing we found was one booth that was selling strawberry shortcake. We really weren’t hungry but felt obligated to at least get something since we came to the strawberry festival. In hindsight, we should have just stayed at the St Patrick’s Day Festival. Even though it was more crowded, it was more fun. Plus we could have gotten some green beer to celebrate.
As March moves on, people slowly start heading out of TGO to head home somewhere up north. This season we only had one next door neighbor on one side of our lot - a couple from Michigan. In past years, the lot on the other side would often have a renting snowbird, sometimes for just a few weeks or a couple months. But this year, that lot has been having a complete makeover. The old concrete pad and utilities were removed and a brand new suite is being built. To some degree, it has been interesting to see the building process from site work, pouring footings and floor, to framing, roofing and everything else. Some of the work crews were noisy and other times we didn’t know somebody was working on a given day since their job was a quiet one. The owners were hoping to be in the place by April but typical construction delays, have pushed that date back so it’s not looking promising they will be in before we head out in late April. The morning our friends from Michigan took off, there was one last launch they would get to see.
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| Another Rocket Launch |
We head back to Orlando Wetlands one afternoon. We’ve been there a few times this season but we suspect that there will be a lot of bird activity - specifically lots of newborns in their nests. We also have another motive for going to the park. There was a geocache there that we hadn’t found yet. In fact, nobody has found it yet. In geocacher-speak, that means there is a First To Find (FTF) available. We aren’t big FTF hounds - people that stop everything they are doing when a new cache is published just so they can be the first finder. We are casual first to find geocachers. If we happen to be in an area and an FTF is available, we may work it into our plans. We only have 20 or so in 19 years of caching. We do have FTFs in 8 different states but don’t have one in Florida yet. The cache in question was placed over two weeks ago. Back where we were when we started caching, a new hide wouldn’t usually last one day before being found. I guess the caching community here near Titusville isn’t as driven to be FTF. We make it to the wetlands and head out for the cache since it was in a more remote portion of the park about a mile from the parking area. After find this one and finding the blank log sheet, we work our way around to the boardwalk area where the nesting birds typically hang out.
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| Gator |
We definitely were right in anticipating lots of newborn birds. But it was also a nice Sunday afternoon, so there were a bunch of other people with the same plans.
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| Great Blue Heron with Two "Little" Ones |
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| Baby Has a Mohawk |
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| Nesting Wood Storks |
There is a section of the boardwalk - maybe and eighth of a mile long - where the bulk of the nesting birds are congregated. There is a surprising variety of birds all hanging out in the same area. Great blue herons, next to wood stork, next to roseate spoonbills and even some snowy egrets.
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| Roseate Spoonbill Nest |
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| Large Babies |
We were surprised to how big of a size difference there was between the babies in different nests. Some of them looked like they may be only a few days old, while others looked like they were ready to fledge. We wandered back and forth watching the activity. Many times the parent would leave the nest and then return a short time later with some fish to feed the youngsters.
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| Very Young Snowy Egret |
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| Larger Baby Snowy Egrets |
There was a lot of other activity taking place that wasn’t involving the nests. I was fascinated with a green heron that was in search of food just feet from the boardwalk. These are very beautiful smallish birds that have a surprisingly long neck for striking prey well under the surface of the water. I caught it in mid-splash.
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| Green Heron Puffs Up Feathers |
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| Same Green Heron Seconds Later |
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| Neck Out, Head Under Water |
We spent a great deal of time on the boardwalk near the “rookery” as it’s called before we start to head out. There was plenty more to see even before we got back to the main road to the parking lot.
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| Tricolored Heron on the Prowl |
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| Turtle Sunning |
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| Anhinga Drying Out |
Having our own RV lot has plenty of perks but it also means there is yard work to deal with. Our HOA fees cover basic lawn care like mowing, edging and even fertilizer from time to time. But any of the tree trimming or planting beds are our responsibility. We have a few planting beds around trees and shrubs and it seems like we spend a fair amount of time dealing with the weeds and replacing dead plants from time to time. One of the beds next to our shed has been a bit of a pain. Chris has planted several new things but it seems like the deer will nibble them even though the plants were supposed to be deer resistant. We’ve also had issues with the sandhill cranes pecking in the bed in search of something and creating a big mess. The recent cold snap in February where we were well below freezing for multiple hours didn’t help matters with the larger bush in this bed and it was now completely dead. We could have just purchased more plants and tried again but that would just continue the vicious cycle. Chris had the idea to remove the majority of the bed and replace it with grass - thus becoming the mowing crew’s responsibility.
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| Planting Bed 2 Years Ago |
The bed has a poured in place concrete curb around the perimeter that needs to come out. We also have an in ground sprinkler head that was at the edge of the bed but now needs to be repositioned. It was a multi day project but I was able to repurpose some of the original edging with the help of an angle grinder from the Sawdust Club. We were surprised to find the sprinkler lines were about 18 inches below grade - not sure why they were so deep but it did require a bit more digging. We regraded and bought some sod to make sure it was in good shape before we leave for the season. With a bit of hard work, we ended up with a nice looking area that will reduce our labor in the future.
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| Partway Through Project |
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| Finished Project |
With just 4 weeks to go before heading out of Titusville, we score 5 nights at a campsite in a state park down in Jupiter Florida where the next post will pick up.
