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Male Northern Pintail

Female and Male American Wigeon

One of the best wildlife viewing spots in the entire world is the Black Point Wildlife drive on the Merritt Island National Wildlife refuge, just a few miles from the restaurant. These photos were taken by Joel Reynolds yesterday morning on Black Point.

Seems like the higher water levels in the mudflats this year has enticed large numbers of Pintails, Coots and American Wigeons.

 The true beauty of the drive is a Florida Treasure, right here in our own backyard.  For more info about this amazing place and their great programs, please visit: http://www.fws.gov/merrittisland.

For the past fifteen years the Brevard Youth Soccer League has been holding their Fall Challenge, pitting ambitious and passionate youth soccer teams against one. The weekend of October 8-9 will see the 16th annual Fall Challenge, and it promises to be one to remember. Close to 100 teams have been registered to compete for honor and glory. Of course, glory and honor are only a part of the equation.

The BYSL Fall Challenges have long been one of the major sources of fundraising for the Brevard Youth. The money raised at the event goes to keep the socially minded initiative running, from buying uniforms and supplies, to throwing events such as the Fall Challenge. As we know there are too few places for our kids to go that keep them from bad influences and poor decisions. By attending the Fall Challenge you know full well that your money is going to support a good cause.

This Saturday, October 1, 2011 marks the 3rd annual Mims Mullet Festival taking place in Mims, Florida. Just like the previous two years, the festival is being held at the Mims United Methodist Church from 11:00am – 6:00pm, and it is free to attend. Many local businesses within the Titusville area will be sponsoring the event, including Walgreens and A Day Away Kayak Tours.

There will be plenty of great food to eat (we can assume some fried Mullet will be on the menu), as well as numerous activities for folks of all ages. Along with craft and vendor booths there will also be the popular Mullet Throwing Contest, a Miss Mullet Contest, and more. So, if you’re itchin’ to have a great time with great people (and even better food) come on out and show your love of all things Mullet!

Check out a map to the event, after the break.

Today marks the first day of the Florida Runners Invitational 12, a highly demanding competition for Cross Country runners around the state. This event, for lack of a better word, has been growing steadily in terms of competitors and spectators alike since it debuted in 2000. 2011 looks to be no different.

The highly regarded collection of races, once again being sponsored by Nike, has bested each year’s previous record of participating schools, clocking out at 134! That doesn’t even include the racers that will be racing without an affiliation. If that doesn’t inspire you to check out the festivities allow me to break down exactly what Florida Runners has planned for both days.

If you are in Central Florida during September get over to Titusville and watch the next rocket launch! Beautiful views from the edges of the Indian River is the perfect place to watch the launch and feel the rumble. Currently scheduled for Thursday, September 8th, at 8:37am.

The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will create the most accurate gravitational map of the Moon to date, improving our knowledge of near-side gravity by 100 times and of far-side gravity by 1000 times. The high-resolution gravitational field, especially when combined with a comparable-resolution topographical field, will enable scientists to deduce the Moon’s interior structure and composition, and to gain insights into its thermal evolution–that is, the history of the Moon’s heating and cooling, which opens the door to understanding its origin and development. Accurate knowledge of the gravity will also be an invaluable navigational aid to future lunar spacecraft. Ultimately, the information contributed by the GRAIL mission will increase our knowledge of how Earth and its rocky neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse worlds we see today.

Scheduled to launch September 8,2011, GRAIL is a mission in NASA’s Discovery Program of solar system investigations. GRAIL will begin its work at the Moon in 2012. Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., is the mission Principal Investigator.

In the course of the mission, GRAIL will conduct two important firsts. This will be the first time any space agency has attempted the complex set of maneuvers required to place two robotic spacecraft into the same precise orbit around a planetary body other than Earth so that they can fly in formation. And it will also be the first time a NASA planetary mission has carried an imager specifically for the purpose of education and public outreach: the MoonKAM cameras whose photographic targets will be chosen by middle school students under the auspices of Sally Ride Science.