Wildlife Refuge

Friday we loaded the dogs in the car for a drive through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was established in 1963 when NASA created the Kennedy Space Center and sits on 140,000 acres of land, of which 130,000 are completely undeveloped, and provides a buffer for space operations while also protecting key habitat such as wetland, hardwood hammock, pine flatwoods, and scrub. The refuge manages habitat for over 500 different species of wildlife and 1,000 species of plants. We were told that the best place to see wildlife on the refuge is Black Point Wildlife Drive, a 7-mile, one-way, self-guided auto tour traversing several shallow salt and freshwater marshes, so this is where we started.

Being the naturalists that we are ;), we would like to tell you what we saw on our drive, so we will guess on some and let the pictures tell the rest of the story. We believe we saw a couple of bald eagles flying but sorry, no pictures of that. However we did see some Roseate Spoonbills, and the only reason we're really certain of that is because a gentleman who was there with his grandson taking pictures (with a more professional camera than ours!) said "Weren't those spoonbills amazing?" right after they flew across the marsh. We saw egrets, storks, shorebirds, and many others. Though the pamphlet said we might see alligators, the only one we saw was just as we were entering the drive, his eyes peeking up out of the water, but when I got out of the car to take a photo, he went back under.

At the Allan D. Cruikshank Memorial Trail we were able to let the dogs out for a stretch (on their leashes, of course). Ah, all the new smells! They always love when we stop and they're able to get out of the car. The trail is actually five miles long, but we simply went to the lookout right at the parking lot and enjoyed the view. No hiking for us.

A short distance from the exit of the Drive is the Manatee Observation Area. The endangered West Indian manatee frequents this spot at the Haulover Canal year round. The manatees can grow up to 12 feet long, weigh up to 2,000 lbs., eat 150-200 lbs. of seagrasses and other aquatic plants each day, have no natural enemies, and may live for over 60 years. They surface to breathe every 3 - 4 minutes, and pretty much all you see is their nose. We had seen a couple at Epcot, so had a better view of what they looked like, but it was so cool to see them here in the wild. They are gentle, slow-moving creatures with large gray-brown bodies, similar to a seal's, with a flat round tail.

On our way back to the campground attempting to cross the road was this turtle! Now, I don't know what kind he was, but hopefully he made it across without getting squashed!

Being retired definitely has its advantages, such as we don't have to spend the weekends doing tourist stuff....we can do it during the week! So this weekend we are sticking around the RV and doing things such as watching our Missouri Tigers beat Texas Tech 41-10 like they did today! Yay team!! It's supposed to rain anyway, so probably not a good time to go to the beach. We'll save that for next week.