When I found out Hubby was getting sent on a business trip to Florida’s Space Coast you bet I wanted to go with him! Luckily he will have a companion pass through SW for a limited time so he was able to get me a ticket to join him for only $12 in fees! I begged my mom to babysit while we went out of town and I’m grateful she agreed (along with the few other parents I asked to give my kids rides places while I was away). When Hubby said I should join him on business trips more often I told him I might run out of people I can ask favors of!
Our flight left Saturday morning and even though the airport was super busy — the bag check and security lines seemed scary long — it was all ok. We picked up our luggage and rental car and headed to the Vineland Disney’s Character Warehouse for the first time and let’s just say it may have been more crowded than the airport. Ha! Then we rushed over to our dinner reservation at Raglan Road and that place definitely lived up to what my Disney sources told me. The service was amazing, especially considering my food sensitivities, and the atmosphere was incredible. With live music and dancing and a pub like feel, it was the perfect way for the two of us to begin some time in Florida together. Then it was time to drive an hour and a half to our hotel on the Space Coast and get some rest for our one full day we were together on the trip.
We spent most of our one day at Satellite Beach and it was so nice! It had everything you would want, even a bin of sand toys you could borrow courtesy of a local Girl Scout troop. Although we didn’t use most of the things they had there such as the sand toys, pavilions, and playground, walking along the beach and just being near the ocean felt instantly rejuvenating. I’m sure Hubby could tell the story better but at one point when we were in the water a hug wave surprised me and the ocean took me for a ride. I was tossed and turned and came up laughing so hard. I felt like the Atlantic tried to take my left leg out to sea and I was covered in sand and sea shells from head to toe. I was literally dripping sea shells everywhere I went and Hubby was calling me his sea creature. He had the smarts to have me rinse off not only at the beach wash station but also in the hotel pool before letting me in hotel shower and it was all a good thing. So funny!
After I got all cleaned up Hubby took me out to eat at Jazzy’s Mainely Lobster. So delicious! We ate some great food on this trip! We had time to go to Ron Jon’s famous Cocoa Beach location before heading to the one thing I reserved for us to do ahead of our trip and it was AMAZING! If you’re ever in Eastern Florida, do yourself a favor and go on a bioluminescence kayak tour. We went with Chris through Cocoa Kayaking to the Indian River Lagoon and could not get over how unique the experience was. Hubby got the best photo we could get (harder than you would think to capture on camera) of me holding two Comb Jellyfish. They aren’t actually jellyfish because it’s a ctenophore but they are about 95% water so feel kind of like a slimy water balloon but as they feel movement next to them they light up. We had nets to catch and release them and our group found so many. Our paddles and the net in the water also stirred up the dinoflagellates (bioluminescent plankton), which made it look like the water was glowing. When we stuck our fingers in it would leave trails of light like we were superheroes. Such a unique creation for Hubby and I to experience for the first time together. Our kids would have loved it too!
The next day after dropping Hubby off at work — oh yeah, that’s why we are here — I headed off to do things I knew my children would not want to ever join me in doing. First off, the Warbird Air Museum in Titusville. Turns out being the first customer in the building means you get a free guided tour by the one and only volunteer of the day. Greg was the best! Turns out I look and sound just like his sister-in-law, Marguerite. When I informed him that was my grandmother’s name we became instant buddies for the morning. I loved hearing all the stories he could tell me about the airplanes and tried to soak it up even though I knew I could never remember everything. We were there for hours touring the museum and even the inside of some of the planes, like this DC-3 that served in the battles of Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne and even the Berlin Airlift.
I was so impressed with was the attitude of freedom to innovate and try anything led to huge advances in technology. I also decided I could never even try to be a pilot with all those switches and buttons and everything else involved. The photo below was amazing because when Greg told me that the yellow lever was to eject and I looked straight up and saw a metal roof he explained to be that I would go down instead. Then when I saw that straight down would either pin down or cut my legs off, he explained that the chair would first go backwards and then dump me out the bottom of the plane where the crewmen would have entered and exited the plane. Oh my goodness. I was learning things right away.
There were three times that I got pretty emotional during my tour but I didn’t want to cry in front of my tour guide or the other visitors so held it together. The first time was in a cargo plane as I could feel what it would be like to hook up to that line and get ready to jump out of an airplane that was large enough to echo. The second was when I sat in a half track and could feel the fear that must have enveloped men as they were transported closer to the front lines. The third is pictured here, when I sat where a machine gun would have been mounted and thought about what it would take to be in that helicopter in Vietnam shooting at humans that under different circumstances might have been your friends.
We didn’t exchange contact into but here is my guide and I before we said goodbye. I am so grateful for his willingness to volunteer at this museum and spend the morning sharing knowledge and stories with me. He told me no one had ever been so happy to listen to him before and I believe it. I was pretty darn happy to be there.
After getting myself some lunch in Titusville I headed to the American Space Museum. It’s a little building that I’m sure my teenagers would have taken one look at and wondered if I had lost my mind. But I got a kick out of things I hadn’t seen or heard before such as learning that this missing hatch from a capsule was found by a McDonnelll employee in a junkyard years after it went missing after an unmanned failed launch… and that the rest of the capsule is in good old Kansas… at the Cosmosphere that I visited and loved.
As I was walking around the museum the curator of the museum walked up to me and started to tell me stories and I got to have a tour of the museum with him! Such a neat experience and I got so much out of listening to another knowledgeable human that was willing to share with me. I felt like I lucked out! Maybe traveling solo to museums is the way to go!
But after picking up Hubby from work I was more than happy to not be solo as we ate dinner at a wonderful Cuban restaurant, briefly visited Paradise Beach, and got Italian ice cream for dessert.
The next day after dropping Hubby off at work I went to Melbourne Beach and had a pretty hard time saying goodbye. I am so grateful for the short but wonderful time I could have while I was in Florida with my husband!
P.S. Be ye warned that if you try to arrive home by midnight your flight might get delayed over an hour and then you might be at your home airport waiting for you luggage for almost an hour -- and not get home until around 3am -- to find your middle daughter and your mother waiting up for you… and accidentally scare your youngest child half to death upon your entrance.
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