Happy Birthday, Jeff!
For Jeff’s birthday, I got him tickets to the Weird Al concert in Melbourne. We took an extra day off for the weekend and had a Jeffy kind of road trip. After a lazy morning, we left in the early afternoon and stopped at our favorite Side Door Brewery in Port St Lucie. We love this place. The beer is good, the owner is very nice, and the clientele is friendly. Unfortunately, it is about an hour away from home, so we only stop by when it’s more convenient.
Afterwards, we found a Target to get a swimsuit for Jeff and got more stuff than we planned on (again, typical!).
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We made it to Beachfly Brewing just in time for lunch and a ribbon-cutting ceremony – we’re in the crowd behind the giant scissors 🙂
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I will confess that I am writing this blog post to catch up on things in October 2019 – I honestly can’t remember what we did the rest of this day and I don’t have photo evidence to help remind me. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was fun 🙂
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On Friday morning, we woke up early-ish and went to the 3 Forks Conservation Area for a walk. This place is a good balance of natural (native plants and animals including a chance for gators) and comfortable (shell path). Although the walk is easy, there is no shade and it got hot hot hot before long. Plus Jeff was getting eaten by bugs, so we looped back to the car after 4 miles or so.
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After getting cleaned up and having a little breakfast, we went to Renninger’s Flea Market. This place is huge and had stalls and stalls of stuff to look through. We were very good and didn’t get much, just had fun looking around 🙂
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After the flea market, we went to the Intracoastal Brewing Co. The place was packed and the beer was good. They had food through a food truck outside, but we were more in the mood for a sit down things somewhere else. We passed a Bennigan’s and decided we were in the mood for a 90’s retro dinner experience. I’m pretty sure I had only eaten at Bennigan’s once or twice when I was in high school and had potato skins each time. Jeff special ordered a whipped cream Bailey’s Kahlua drink that he used to get when he was in college. T-rex enjoyed the whipped cream 🙂
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The next day, we stopped at the Big Orange Juice Stand to add to Jeff’s collection of kitschy road-side attractions.
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After that, we spent most of the day at the Brevard Zoo. We got the adventure package with a kayaking safari adventure and feeding the Lorikeets and cockatiels. This is one of the nicest zoos I have ever been to! The enclosures are very nice with plenty of animal enrichment, and the viewing set up is really fun. This place is really a little gem in North central Florida.
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We stopped by Quarters Brewing after this for a nice retro arcade experience for Jeff.
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After a light dinner, we went to the Weird Al show. What a fun night! He is touring with a live symphony orchestra which added a neat layer to his silly song catalog.
Afterwards, we stopped for a beer at Hell N Blazes Brewing before going back to the hotel. We had a leisurely morning sleeping in the next day before Jeff left for Tampa to see the Barenaked Ladies back/side stage, and I headed back home to get ready for work the next day.
Jeff, I don’t know if you read these, but if you do, I hope you know that I love you very much!! I would be thrilled to go one a lifetime of trips to see Weird Al and the Dan Band with you :*