Published:   National Geographic Travel

Location: Florida, Titusville, Cape Canaveral

Most travelers to Florida’s Space Coast center their itineraries on the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, especially this month as the U.S. marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon. But this stretch of more than 70 miles of Atlantic coastline, east of Orlando, offers stellar experiences beyond Cape Canaveral.

“It’s a water world here,” says Charlie Mars, a chief NASA engineer for the Apollo moon landing. “This is a place of real natural beauty that’s been this way forever.”

“The space business itself, since the 1950s, has had a few ups and downs,” says Mars, “But now that we have the commercial [launches], it’s starting to really take hold again. People just want to see other people being launched into space.”