Most visitors to Cocoa Beach head straight to the beach, especially if they’ve followed the Beachline from the city to the coast to get here. But that’s not all that Cocoa Beach and its surrounding communities of Cocoa, Cape Canaveral, and Merritt Island have to offer.
Paddlers have many miles of waterways to ply. In the Banana River Aquatic Preserve, paddlers can follow a marked blueway through the Thousand Islands, a puzzle of mangrove tunnels between tiny islands just offshore. Land-based trails lead along its edges.
The city of Cocoa Beach maintains several natural areas, and Jetty Park at Cape Canaveral has the only walk-to-the-beach camping in the region. Along Merritt Island, windsurfers launch from Kelly Park because of the persistent breeze there. Across the island and neighboring Cocoa, there are county natural lands and open space parks to explore, all the way west to the St. Johns River.
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INCLUDES: Cape Canaveral, Cocoa | NEARBY: Melbourne, Merritt Island, Orlando, Titusville | ALONG: Atlantic Ocean , Indian River Lagoon | PART OF: Central Florida, Florida’s Space Coast