Cape Canaveral, Feb 1-6, 2022

      We had a good time at Cape Canaveral and the yacht club where we stayed had the best showers on the trip so far.  On a boat you are always trying to preserve water and electricity, so when you are at a dock, its always nice to have unlimited hot water to shower in.  Our boat has a nice shower, but a small hot water tank and we generally have to run the somewhat noisy generator to make hot water, so we'd prefer to shower ashore.  Sometimes marinas have pretty spartan conditions in the showers, such that one would rather deal with the limited hot water onboard.  Not here!  The showers were large, great water pressure and like 6 hooks to hang your towels, clothes and so on.  Its the little things, I tell ya.  The only downside of the location is that there just isn't all that much to do right at the port.  There are a handful of bars and restaurants in the area surrounding the cruise ship terminals, but they were mostly poorly reviewed and none of them were especially easy to walk to from our location.

     However, there were a lot of rental car companies with surprisingly affordable rates.  I had a bit of a long hike down a busy A1A highway to get there, but I was rewarded with a little car for $35 a day.  This allowed us to do more exploring and we ended up being very happy with this little place called Ellie Mae's Tiki Bar.  Strong online reviews led to me check it out for our first lunch out.  When we arrived, we almost noped out because the outside looked pretty dismal.  I assured Lisa that the reviews said there was an outside dining area that was lovely and we decided to mask up and check it out.  Once you passed through the ordinary inside eating area, the back was a delight, with a genuine tiki bar, lots of sand and tables nicely spaced out around a dance floor and a stage.  Lunch was delicious -- I had a French Dip made from slices of pot roast that was out of this world.  

Lisa happily surprised by the back yard of the divey looking joint.

     The waitress was apparently also the owner and she really sold us on the idea of returning for dinner where they had all the wine you could drink and a live band.  Being suggestible types, we went ahead and did just that.  It was a perfect spot to watch the sunset and not all the wine was bad.  Smoked fish dip which is somehow a really big thing in Florida (think crab dip) was the highlight, although everything was pretty good.  The band was pretty good and played a lot of older music which appealed to the crowd who were neighborhood folks mostly.  We tried to get them to play our anthem of If I Had a Boat by Lyle Lovett, but it wasn't in their repertoire. 

Soothing tunes of the Doors under a gorgeous sunset.

     The ladies at the table next to our were regulars at the all-the-wine-you-can-drink party and they strongly advised us that the sparking blue Prosecco was the way to go.  We should have listened to them from the start because it was far better than anything else we tried.  I had to behave myself, but Lisa didn't and she eventually succeeded in dragging me to the dance floor not once, but twice.  My only consolation was that everyone else seemed drunk enough that I don't think I was even the worst dancer although I was certainly in the running.

Lisa on the blue Prosecco before it got crazy.

      We eventually did branch out and try some other places.  Jazzy's Mainely Lobster was packed every time we went by and the lobster roll was delicious.  I'd highly encourage anyone in the area to check them out.  Another surprising place was Cracker's Island Grille with lots of Bahamas influenced menu items.  The last two might technically be in Cocoa Beach.  I'm not entirely sure where the dividing line is.

     By far the coolest thing we did was to travel to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center.  It was advertised as the closest possible place to watch the Space X launch, so of course we got tickets.  There was a momentary panic when they scrubbed the launch just as we were preparing to head out.  However, once I got through to the customer service number, they were very happy to switch to the next day when the launch was rescheduled to take place.  Budget was also happy to give us another day of car rental, so we were all set.  We didn't really do the Space Center justice, since we were really focused on seeing the launch.  We took the first shuttle bus to the Apollo center where the grandstands were set up to watch the launch.  This left us a bit too much time to wait, but we didn't really mind.  We showed all the people seated next to us our photos of the rocket poised to launch from our sail-by and everyone was fascinated because we didn't have nearly as clear a view of the rocket from the stands.  There was an expert doing commentary and answering questions and he really added to the experience, explaining a lot of what happens during the pre-checks and walking us through the process.  When the rocket finally took off, it was an amazing thing to behold.  Describing the sound as thunderous doesn't really do it justice, the ground vibrated, my chest vibrated, the stands vibrated.  It was absolutely one of the coolest things I think I've ever seen.  The first stage landed on a drone ship out near the Bahamas, so we watched that on a big screen, but I have to admit I'm still awestruck that this is a thing we are able to do.