Cocoa Beach to Siesta Key

Track 'Home' Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." Jac Cousteau.

Day 52

The plan for the day was a somewhat last minute decision to head to Kennedy Space Centre to soak up some of what NASA has achieved in space exploration over the last 40 years. Our space exploration however only lasted 40 mins as we found that it had been made into an Musement park and every school field trip from Florida was in attendance. We also disocovered that Dylan and Sol were too young to see a lot of the attractions. After a manic 10 mins in the angry birds experience where we were nearly demolished by the hoards of bussling kids, we called it a day and headed to customer services to see if we could get a refund. A really lovely lady there agreed we would better off getting our 150 dollars back and gave us a refund despite the loss of our tickets and receipt!

We happily left for Cocoa Beach the home of Kelly Slater. After doing some shopping at Ron Jons (worlds biggest surf shop) we had a lovely afternoon on the beach, cooling off occasionally in the warm crystal clear water. We drove just about 30 mins to a county park to spend the night.

  Day 53

Awoke to a vast array of sand fly bites from the previous night so decided to ease the itching by heading straight to the beach. We were the only people on the beach for miles surprisingly, although it was still before 9. After all taking a quick dip we set off for the west coast of Florida and arrived at Myakka State Park afternoon.

 It was a fantastic park with lots to do and we went for a walk through the forest and up the canopy walk and lookout tower. We drove out to the lake in the evening to try to see if there was any internet signal and watched the aligators floating around as the sunset.

Day 54.

 

We went out on a Gentle Ben style airboat for a guided tour of the lake. The wildlife was incredible. We saw some pretty large aligators very close tothe boat, wild boars on the shore and lots of birds including ospreys diving for fish. Incredible. Later on after a cold drink in the cafe we went out on another tour in a wagon through some of the off the beaten track parts of the park. The driver/ narrator had a voice that would make a menu seem interesting. We listened to him tell tales of what life was like here 100yrs ago on the farmsteads when the prairie still existed in florida. We had a really good lunch in the cafe and a bit of a shop before heading on tover Scherer state park near Sarasota.

It was amazing how quickly the glitz of the east coast disappeared and the country clubs were soon replaced by fields of orange trees and laborers huts.

When we arrived on the west coast it was so hot that the only thing for it was to go straight to the nearest beach so it was the lovely Nokomis Beach where we spent the next few hours. We made the decision that as this is the last coastline that we would see for a while that we d spend the next morning at Siesta Key, voted the best beach in the US.

 Day 54.

Dumping was overseen by the rangers as they had a back-up! Talk about airing your dirty laundry in public. Becs stayed in the air con breastfeeding, one of the perks, whilst pete fussed about with buckets and gloves! After checking out of the state park we took a leisurely 30mins drive to Siesta Key to see what all the fuss is about.

 It WAS lovely, fine pure white sand and perfect clear blue water. We all spent a while in the water snorkling,  Dylan is turning part fish the amount of time he is spending in water these days!

We dragged ourselves away mid afternoon and set off to Lake Panasofkee where we would spend the night before one of our early starts to get some mileage under our belts before the kids wake up. We again noted a very different Florida to that seen around the coast with lots of agriculture and small drive through towns. The KOA campsite was perfect for our needs and our early getaway.