Travels in a Tin Can

Our route south from St Augustine along the Florida coast was
beautiful, especially when we had sea on one side of the road and intra-
coastal water on the other. It brought back memories of driving north towards
the Redwoods in California, but warmer and sunnier. We were even driving on
Route 1 again. The drive took us through Daytona where we resisted the urge
to take Harvey for a high-speed race on the famous beach, and we arrived on
the Space Coast by late afternoon.
I expected this region to be very built up and crowded, but actually the
area surrounding the Space Centre is a wildlife refuge, Merritt Island, which is
where we headed first. Thinking about it I suppose it makes sense to put
something so noisy (and potentially dangerous) as a shuttle launch in the
middle of nowhere. So our first taste of the Space Coast was a six-mile
wildlife drive, full of beautiful birds (including some gorgeous pink specimens
that we photographed because they was pretty and then later discovered that
they were Roseate Spoonbills...more of that later), devoid of many people
and even featuring a brief glimpse of an alligator.
From here we drove straight into a government-restricted area, and
then rapidly straight back out - with only minimal assistance from a gun-
wielding guard.
For the second night running we opted for a government run camp, this
time the port-run Jetty Park. This proved to be basic but fairly cheap and
clean, plus to be honest there was little choice of campsites. For the first time
we were actually lucky with the timing of a visit, if we had turned up with no
booking the day before a shuttle launch we would have been sleeping in a car
park or a lay by.