Port St. John and Daytona Beach Shores

After Merritt Island we stayed at a place just an hour north of there in the small town of Port St. John. Last year we stayed in Titusville, which is about 10 minutes north of PSJ. This is a cute house that we stayed at for 4 days. And we actually came back here again after our stay in Daytona Beach Shores.

This was nice because it has its own pool and hot tub. The pool is salt water, which is interesting. And we have to text the owner to have her turn the jets on, which is strange, but worked out fine.

On our way there we stopped at Port Canaveral hoping to see some cruise ships, but it was in the middle of the week when they are seldom in port. We did get to see a SpaceX booster that came back and also the SpaceX “boat” that they use to bring in the capsules when they land in the ocean…either with supplies or astronauts.

We did get to see a launch, but didn’t take any pictures of that one. We could stand in the backyard and watch it. Fun to see the sky light up just before lift off.

Daytona Beach Shores

Our next AirBNB was at Daytona Beach, or so I thought but guess it was really Daytona Beach Shores, which is just a little south of Daytona Beach. I wanted to get another view of the waves and this time it was the ocean rather than the gulf.

On the way to this spot, we stopped at the Manatee Observation Deck and also the Black Duck Wildlife Drive. We just missed seeing the Manatees close to the observation deck…I saw a little glimmer of a mom and baby. They were not very active at this time of day. We have been there more like supper time and they can be very active in this canal area.

Then it was on to the wildlife drive, which is a 17 mile drive (< 10 mpg), which was interesting but it was a gray day so I think the activity was kind of limited. We did see some fun and unusual birds along the drive.

I was disappointed in not seeing any alligators while we drove through. I did see 3 small ones but was not fast enough to take pictures. But then on the drive out, we got to see these….. 🙂

That was fun to see both and they were definitely bigger that the little ones I saw just above the water early in the drive.

We decided to stop in New Smyrna Beach for lunch in a restaurant that I found as one of the recommended in the area. We did not realize how popular NSB was…and of course this was a Sunday, even though not quite Spring Break yet, which made the area pretty crowded. The restaurant is interesting because right away there is a sign that says there is no one to seat you…seat yourselves!! LOL. Food was pretty good and it is right on the sand of the beach….I think my google said it was the closest restaurant to the beach.

This was the lifeguard stand on this beach….

We drove on to Daytona Beach Shores, taking highway 1 or A1A instead of the freeway since we had time to waste. The condo was on the 7th floor right on the beach and I got the beach view I wanted and also good wave action. It is was the chilly side when we got there…in the 50’s so the beach did not have a lot of people on it that first day.

View from the deck….

One of the very best things about this condo was on the deck we could watch the sun rise and then on the back open deck we could watch the sunset. Both some very beautiful sights….morning and evening.

The first morning we were there, at 8am there was a knock on the door. I was very hesitant to open the door, but then the guy said he was the building manager and he had a contractor that had an appointment to look under the sink to assess some work that needed to be done. The building manager said didn’t the rental company tell you? And I said we knew nothing about it!! He also told me that maybe you also don’t know that tomorrow morning (at 8 am) we are going to replace the front door!! Again nothing had been said to us from the property rental company. And he said it would take all day to replace.

You know I certainly dinged that management company on that when I wrote the review. Certainly understand that maintenance might need to be done, but letting us know would have been a nice thing!!

Being able to have these views from the deck somewhat made up for the lack of communication!

The spot we were at was a non-driving area, but the poles to the left on the picture shows the area that is driveable.

In fact after leaving this AirBNB heading to Jacksonville for the night, David decided it would be ok to drive on the beach with the Tesla. The signs all say you must have 4 wheel drive and he said the Tesla was all wheel drive which was so much better. I decided to google it…LOL…well because our Model the X is so heavy they advise you don’t take that on the beach or you may risk having to be towed. So you know, of course, I sat there worrying about how we were going to get out of there. We thought should we back up and go out the way we came in? The beach “road” is one-way so we were risking getting yelled at for driving back. We looked on the map and it seemed like the next exit was a ways down the beach. Well we went for it, and made it out without even struggling through the sand! PHEW!!! All I could think is that we would have to call a tow and then potentially be late for Nate Bargatze that evening.