Orlando Day Trip: Merritt Island NWR

It is easy to get wrapped up into the commercial/theme park aspect of central Florida, however, we are getting an opportunity to see some of Florida's natural side. After a return trip to the Kennedy Space Center, for the full tour, we headed out to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Merritt Island NWR was established in 1963 as an overlay of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center. Consisting of 140,000 acres, the Refuge provides a wide variety of habitats: coastal dunes, saltwater estuaries and marshes, freshwater impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks provide habitat for more than 1,500 species of plants and animals. Some of the water heights within the NWR are managed to produce a variety of habitats for wintering birds.

Here are just some of the things we saw in our short visit.