Sea Turtle Walk

About a month ago I made our reservations for the Sea Turtle Walk through the Sea Turtle Preservation Society near Melbourne and last night it was our turn to go. Yahoo! We headed out late in the afternoon with the thought to get dinner first. Our first attempt for dinner was a bust. It had closed and was taken over by some other restaurant. Nah. Not what we were after. So the search continued.

We landed at Coasters Pub & Biergarten in Melbourne and we were all pleased at the selection. Now, you may think by the name it's just a bar but it really was so much more. They have a huge menu with a variety of different foods. With 6 in our party absolutely everyone was pleased. They do have a great list of beer on tap from all over the world, just not much local or small craft brewery stuff.

On to turtle time! We finally found the location with a little turning and counting addresses - which was actually pretty funny but you had to be there to appreciate it. The STPS rotates through 3 or 4 different sites in the area for their walks. Unfortunately this week they haven't had any luck because of the cooler temps in the water. Well, that's possibly the reason. I'm told they usually have multiple sightings each night. There is a great presentation while scouts are out looking for nesting turtles on the beach. During the presentation you learn about 5 different sea turtles and the 3 that nest on the Florida beaches. The Loggerhead Sea Turtle is the only one of the 5 that you can actually watch nest because they are threatened but not endangered.

They told us that they have so many nests in the area that the group from UCF actually only mark every 5th nest. 

But sadly no turtles for us tonight. But we did have a wonderful view of the stars and planets. It was a beautiful evening for shooting stars. In fact, I saw 4 of them myself but would say the group saw many more than that. Several of us pulled out our sky apps to see what we could identify.

Overall, the STPS does a fabulous job with their turtle crawls but we just weren't lucky tonight but not for their lack of trying. We will just have to try again. Gladly!