Coco Beach

After the launch, we ate our sandwich at our campsite, took a nap, and hung around a little until people cleared out. It had been a few hours, and we decided we wanted to get back to our hotel in Orlando, so we started to drive. Rumor had it that it took 6-8 hours to get from Titusville to Orlando after a launch, and it was true. We got in bumper to bumper traffic, and didn't even go a mile in 10 minutes. So, we got off at the first exit we could, turned around, and went the other direction to Coco Beach. This is a pretty well known tourist stop that we were going to go to later on our trip, but instead, this was the perfect time.

When we got there, we shopped at Ron Jon's Surf Shop, and a few other wanna be Ron Jon shops, and then headed to the ocean for a walk on the beach.
One of my favorite things about Florida are all the palm trees. I love them, and they are everywhere! Little birdies even live in them, like they do in our regular trees. I think it's cute!
And of course, my next favorite thing about Florida, pelicans! They were flying back and forth down the beach, well, more like gliding. They hardly ever flapped their wings. They are beautiful.
I guess Coco Beach is famous for this pier. It's a really long pier with a few restaurants, and people can fish (ew) off of it.
They had a lot of volleyball nets set up by the pier. Looked like fun.
This was the view from the pier. Coco Beach is really wide, and has really soft sand. The water was pretty chilly though, we didn't know how people could swim in it.
Here's the end of the rickety old pier. You had to pay to go on this part, but I got the guy to let me go take a few pictures for free. Restorations with all that fee money?
Then we went by the Port to have our first real meal in 2 days! Krusty's was delicious. I thoroughly enjoyed my very fresh sea food platter, and finished off with home made key lime pie. It was scrumptious!
The best part was we got to eat right next to this family of pelicans! My favorite!
Isn't this guy posing for a perfect pelican picture?
That guy on the top was the oldest pelican. He was a different color and had a HUGE beak.
You can see his big beak in this picture.

After dinner, we finally made our way back to Orlando, which still took a little longer than usual, but we did sleep in a real bed that night in air conditioning! Despite my severe sun burn, I slept like a rock! It was wonderful.