Saturday, April 30, 2022. Canaveral National Seashore

Saturday, April 30, 2022.  

Thanks to Kathy and John’s power outlet, we slept very comfortably with our air conditioner keeping the temperature and humidity down inside.  While the temperatures outside were in the 70’s, it was quite humid.  Kathy and John treated us to breakfast, and then we toured the Canaveral National Seashore and an adjacent wildlife refuge. The Canaveral National Seashore is a long stretch of sandy beach with numbered parking lots.  There were lots of families and couples enjoying the beach and tiny shells for collecting.  

Surprisingly, for a National Park, there was a nude beach at parking lot #13.  

The wildlife refuge had a several mile driving loop through mangroves like in the Everglades where we saw lots of anhinga birds, egrets, herons, grackles and gallinules, including a brood of baby gallinules.  

While driving through the refuge, Kathy and John’s car developed a malfunction in the power windows where the rear driver side window couldn’t be raised after it had been lowered so we could look out the windows at the wildlife.  They had been having some intermittent problems with the window switches not working over the last year or so.

We stopped at a Mims Southern BBQ for take out since we couldn’t get the window back up.  We went back to Kathy and John’s home to eat the BBQ for lunch.  

Then Ben and John went to work to remove the driver side door panel to access the power window switches.  Ben made a temporary fix by laminating the keypads with aluminum foil to get the window back up, but with the switch out of the car, Kathy was able to search the internet and found that the switch box was available at an auto parts store  in an adjacent town.  So Kathy and John ran out and got the new replacement switch.  The new switch was installed and the door panel was then reinstalled.  Now all the windows work properly and reliably.    As a token of their gratitude, Kathy and John very generously gifted us with a bottle of their select Barrel of Jack Daniels, a 25th wedding anniversary gift.

With the car windows now fixed so that they could be properly closed to secure the car, we drove to the Playa Linda Brewing Company for microbrews and dinner.  The staff knew John and Buddy quite well because John and Buddy frequent a near by park in the mornings and then stop in for a microbrew and pretzels.  

The selection was excellent.  Ben had a pour of a nice red ale with his roast beef, caramelized onions and cheese sandwich while Janet had an excellent root beer with her Cuban sandwich.  We then stopped at the Moonlight drive-in for a Key Lime milk shake.