Turkey Creek Sanctuary and FIT’s Botanical Garden near Melbourne Florida…

All good things come to an end and so did our stay at Flagler Beach Florida. We packed up the RV and headed further south until arriving at Wickham Park, a Brevard County Park. We have stayed often in this park as it usually has sites available and if  one is lucky enough to score a site on the back row like we did it will be a really large site. We plan to be here six nights before moving further south.

One fun thing about Wickham Park is that we able to walk to the disc golf course within the park and enjoy a nice round of disc golf. This course has 22 holes fairly well marked out with only a small amount of water coming into play. The biggest hazards are palmetto thickets which of course we landed in often and had to spend a good deal of time searching for discs. Boy isn't our life rough…

One day we drove over to the Turkey Creek Sanctuary which has a nice (but short) 1.6 mile hike through the woods. With much of the trail on wooden boardwalks hiking there is relatively easy. The planks of the boardwalk are mostly claimed by donors as many of them had their names or honorariums placed on them. The trail was through typical vegetation for this region and also took us along part of the banks of Turkey Creek. We did spot a few Gopher Turtles and not much else but that didn’t stop us from enjoying this hike.

Another afternoon we drove over to the Botanical Gardens at the Florida Institute of Technology. We had a hard time finding parking so I asked a parking patrol person where we could park and he said “Follow me”.  I followed his three wheeler where he pointed out a reserved spot indicating we should park there park there. Cool… he then gave us walking directions to the garden.

This 15 acre Botanical Garden has a stream meandering throughout the garden. Overhead is a shady hammock of mostly palm trees . The garden is right in the heart of the campus and we noticed students passing through it on the way to class. The main trail was named after Dent Smith in honor of him being the founder of the Palm Society which is a worldwide organization whose focus is the study of the palm family. It was a neat little park and we love the botanical gardens in Florida as they are always so tropical and “other worldly.”

With a few more days in Wickham we will relax then slowly move on making our way to Bonita Springs by the first of December. Our next stop will be in Vero Beach to spend some quality time with Sharon's cousin John and his wife Penny whom we always look forward to spending time with.. As always we are still very thankful for the experiences we have enjoyed in this lifestyle On the Road of Retirement…

NOTE: We are now in Vero Beach, Florida until just after Thanksgiving…