Published: Endless Vacation Magazine

Location: Cocoa Beach, Florida

There was a short period in time when I called Cocoa Beach home. It was not my choice of places to live, I was there for love – of a person, of the ocean a bit, too. It was a waypoint enroute to someplace better. The town bored me. It felt tattered and torn, uninspired, and saved only by the ribbon of sand and blue water edging it, which was certainly full of possibilities but also something to gaze longingly upon while dreaming of someplace better. When Endless Vacation Magazine sent me to the area to report on what there was to do in Cocoa Beach, I took it as an invitation to see the place in a new light. And while I left knowing I would never move back, I did find there was a whole lot to enjoy there from a tourism point of view. I paddled a kayak through bioluminescent waters and took a biplane ride over the area, high above its sun-bleached strip malls and chain stores for views of water water everywhere and mangrove mazes, the likes of which I never knew existed in this place. I got some perspective, in others words. And I went for walks on a stretch of sand that would never feel the same because the memories I’d made there had been washed away.