Captain This, Captain That....

You'll never see so many captains as you do when you vacation in Florida....It seems EVERYBODY is a captain...Of course all the boat rentals are run by captains, well, duh, Sparky, you gotta be a captain to take people out on the water! At least, you do if you run a reputable boating company. There's a captain by every name you can think of, and of course, there's the famous Captain Morgan which is a rum company.....Even the restaurants are named after captains! Like Captain Hiram's Resort/ Restaurant and Sand Bar which is located in Sebastian, FL.

It's been raining for the last five days off and on, so we have been limited to exploring the coast by way of highway A1A and Highway 1. Highway 1 runs along the Indian River, and as we were coming back from a driving tour up and down the coast, we headed over to highway 1. We got hungry (Sparky is ALWAYS hungry!)  and saw Captain Hiram's Resort and Sand Bar. We heard live music coming from the restaurant/sand bar, so we decided to stop and get an appetizer or two.

It was a COOL place as far as the atmosphere! Not so much for the food, as Yelp will tell you. That's an app we use on our smartphones to check out local places to eat and visit. Here's a link to the layout and offerings of Captain Hiram's. The main thing you need to know is, it's family friendly, there's live entertainment, if you sit outside, you are sitting in a TRUE sand bar---there is sand under your feet and you're gonna get sand in your shoes!

Food is just average, but the atmosphere is really fun....We enjoyed it. Would we come back? Not for the food, but yes for the appetizers or a happy hour special and to see the entertainment. We really enjoy live music and live bands when we find them. We really like sitting out by the water and having a bite to eat, listening to music, that's one of our favorite things to do.

One of the other things we did today was drive up to Cocoa Beach. Eldy had heard a lot of things about it and wanted to visit it, as he'd never seen it. We had a campground to check out in Melbourne, an Outdoor Resort park. We visited that first and found that the park was completely sold out as far as sites, it was an older park and everyone was packed in extremely tight. If you see their brochure, they don't show you the tight camping sites, they show you their pool, which is across the street on oceanfront property and which is very beautiful. We saw a mini Winnie trying to negotiate a tight corner turn, run over the curb BIG TIME so it seems a big rig would have a very difficult time getting in and around this park.

On to Cocoa Beach..There is a pier there with a bunch of restaurants...and of course Cocoa Beach is a hangout for young kids, it appeared. The pier and structures and restaurants seemed to be run down, and the whole atmosphere at the pier was a little on the depressing side. Like this had once been THE place to come for spring break and now, not so much. On our way back through Cocoa Beach, we stopped at Ron Jon's, a well known surfing store open 24/7 and 365 days a year. It was quite the place!

You can buy one of Ron's custom made surfboards, but not cheaply!

We enjoyed our car ride today on highway 1 and highway A1A...the houses along the ocean are AMAZING!  Yet we saw some big mansions started and never finished,  and then, quite a few for sale along the ocean..Hurricane damage was not noticeable. We saw a figure today, that 44% of the houses in Florida are valued at less that what people owe on their mortgages...That's really tough for the homeowner to bear....A great buyer's market out there, that's for sure!

Tomorrow, Sparky is hoping for decent weather to get out in her Sea Eagle 385 for the first time.....