Cocoa Beach, NASA, Space Coast KOA
02-28-2021. After we left Daytona, we wanted to stop in the Space Coast, you know, see NASA, go to Cocoa Beach, see if we could find Jeannie, stuff like that. It seems campgrounds are few and far between here, most are full even though it was Sunday night, and too many have “Trailer Park” in the name.
We found a spot at a KOA, in Mims, just north of Titusville. It may have been the last spot they had. KOA’s are generally nice enough, sometimes a little pricey, and usually have a dog park. This one fell a bit short. When we got there, the space in front of the building was full of fifth wheels coming or going, including one mostly still on the road. I found a place in everyone’s way and went inside to check in. The very nice lady who took my money gave me a map and told me my site was over there somewhere, she wasn’t sure. The guy who’s job it is to escort campers to their sites was taking a break. Another guy was asking for his money back, saying his neighbors had been arguing loudly the entire 2 days he was there. I figured I’d unhook the Jeep out front and try to find a campsite.
The campsite was right where she said it would be. I’d have had a better approach angle if I’d gone between the big building and this utility shed, but it looked tight so I didn’t. After a couple tries I got the bus close enough to plug in the power, levelled, and put the slides out.
We took the dogs for a walk, explored a little, got the lay of the land, and figured out how I’d get our monster out of there in the morning. Turns out this place is kinda 3 campgrounds in one! The middle was your basic old campground. Smallish sites, gravel roads, everything really close together. Our site was the last row of this. To the left of us was a fenced area with a sign saying “Residents only.” Lots of old broken down trailers in there. Lots of interesting looking people coming out walking their dogs or heading for the bathroom or laundry. On the other side is New Stuff! Big long concrete pull throughs, each filling up almost as we watched. Still gravel roads, still kinda tight, but the campsites were nice.
After feeding the dogs we headed out to explore. Titusville wasn’t much, kinda a forgotten looking downtown next to The Intracoastal. We took the causeway across to the Kennedy Space Center. We just drove through here, saw the sign for the visitors centers but continued on into Cocoa Beach. Cocoa Beach turned out to be your basic beach town. We stopped in a beach store with it’s own parking lot and picked up a magnet, paid for parking for an hour to walk on the beach. Weather is great, whole area is very crowded. On the way out we spotted a Mexican Restaurant called La Cantina that had patio seating out front. Always up for that I pulled in and parked. We had to wait a bit for a table out front to open up, but not long. Service was just fair but good enough. I really need to keep up on these posts. That was a week ago now, I don’t even remember what we ate, but I remember that it was very good!
Back to the bus to get some sleep. This turned out to be less than easy. A crew was doing what must have been emergency repairs to the plumbing in the bath house. He pulled his big diesel pickup in right next to us and left it running while he sat in the cab and twiddled on his phone. I finally went out and asked him to shut it down. He was nice, and did. For an hour, then fired it up again. There were also no less than 3 generators running! One behind the “Residents only” fence. One next to an old fifth wheel a hundred yards away, the third I never found. Now normally (in no hookup camping areas) “quiet hours” are from 10 to 6am at the least, no generators during that time. In campgrounds with hookups, no generators allowed ever, period. I don’t know why these people needed to run these things all night, and I certainly didn’t go out and ask. We closed our windows tight, turned on our AC, and tried to drown them out and get some sleep. Unsuccessfully.
They had a pool but no dog park. I was able to fit one more bag of garbage into the 3 overflowing dumpsters on our way out. I do not recommend this campground.
