Cocoa Beach Florida

The Space Coast, as it is known, is home to the John F. Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. Cocoa Beach, Florida is only fifteen miles from the Kennedy Space Center and the city thrived when NASA employees and their families started to take up residence there during the 1960s.  Parades took place in the city to celebrate manned space missions. The area was the backdrop for the story of a fictitious astronaut in the hit TV show, I Dream of Jeannie. The city is located in Brevard County and the census for 2005 showed a population of 12,435. Kyustendil in Bulgaria is its only sister city. The area is a favorite haunt of tourists with its great beaches, scenery, wildlife and sporting opportunities. The large tourism center of Orlando is only an hour away by car.

It's an ideal place for playing golf, surfing, parasailing or deep-sea fishing. Cocoa Beach Florida claims to have the largest surf shop in the world. It sells everything related to surfing and skating and there is a surfing museum, a surfing training center and a sculpture garden. Port Canaveral is close by, where major companies dock their cruise ships and there is the opportunity to sample a casino cruise ship. Local wildlife includes dolphins and Florida Manatee. The Kennedy Space Center attracts many visitors and there are exhibits of space exploration hardware and memorabilia in the museums, two IMAX theatres and bus tours.

The local zoo is called Brevard Zoo and contains animals and birds from every continent and has conservation programs in place. There are guided kayak tours and a zoo train for the children to enjoy. Visitors can hand feed the giraffes and see rhino, alligators and crocodiles and Indonesian fruit bats. Australian species include kangaroos and wallabies, kookaburras and cockatoos. Various types of monkeys and llamas are from South America. The collection has a good reputation at Cocoa Beach Florida in trying to help endangered species.

Wildlife can also be seen at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. NASA owns the land near Cocoa Beach Florida, which stretches over 140,000 acres and covers different terrain, including marshes, coastal dunes, pine forests and oak hammocks. There are plant species, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, some of which are on the endangered list. Visitors can explore on walking or driving trails, by canoe or boat and there is limited fishing and wildfowl hunting allowed.