All of the images I am showing this week I took at the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge which is near a small town called Titusville in Florida.
I cannot think of Titusville now without humming along “there’s so much to do, there’s so much to do” after a hysterically funny video we found on YouTube made by a young guy mocking how little there is to do in Titusville – complete with it’s own theme song! It shows all the run down restaurants, movie theatres and malls. I guess if you’re young and you live there, there isn’t much night life or anything. But there really was a lot to do in Titusville!
There was the wildlife refuge, the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, the Canaveral National Seashore, and Cocoa Beach. Daytona Beach is just a short drive away. We had a fabulous campsite called “Manatee Hammock” that was right on the water and had a great view of the launch pad at the space center. Unfortunately we missed a launch by about a week – that would have been a cool thing to see.
As we drove along “wildlife drive” at the Merritt Island refuge we came across our first alligator. It’s funny looking back now at how scary he seemed and how I thought he might decide to eat me for lunch if I got too close. Now we’ve seen so many and not one has been interested in eating me! They pretty much just sunbathe and they might take a dip in the water if they see you coming. Nevertheless they are still breathtaking.
If you are interested, you can watch the “Unofficial Titusville Tourism Video”:
Very cool shot Anne. Looks like Titusville is the go-to place ; )
Thank you very much Len. Yes, Titusville is the place to be. If I was going to come down to Florida for the whole winter I would probably stay there because of its proximity to so many different things.
Anne, I have been enjoying your postings. I love the gator! They are amazing creatures. They just laze around bathing in the sun but have ability to move like lightning in a split second.
Keep up the wonderful images.
chris
Hi Chris, thank you very much for stopping by the blog and leaving your comments, I really appreciate it. There will be many more gators coming up in the next few weeks as I haven’t even started my images from the everglades yet. One of the places I went in the everglades was loaded with gators just alongside the path!
By the way, I commented on your blog, but I’m not sure if you got it. There is no selection in the drop down box to comment as URL – usually you can enter your name and URL. Anyway I choose to comment with my google ID.
Wow how close did you get??? It’s a great capture.
Hi Edith, this particular gator was probably about 40 feet away from me with a body of water between us. But a few weeks later when I was in the everglades I was at a place that had tons of gators alongside the path and they were only a couple of feet away!!! They rarely moved though and if they did everyone within 20 feet would start backing up. Except one really stupid woman who actually picked up the gator’s tail!! Seriously. I wish I got a photo of her. She deserved to have her arm eaten.
Titusville is soo underated! I guess your right about the night life, although that’s important there is still loads of things to do in Titusville! ( Im guessing you used like an x80 zoom camera for that photo haha )
Hi Callum, actually I used a huge 400mm prime lens for this image. You’re right Titusville is underrated, we really enjoyed it there. Thank you very much for your visit and comments.