Kelsey Walters

Your smartphone can be working a lot harder for you, even without the use of AI. With a few built-in tools and inexpensive NFC tags, it can react to where you are, what it connects to and even what you tap.

This October, Brevard Zoo is giving families two very different ways to celebrate Halloween. The longtime favorite Boo at the Zoo is back for another season of daytime trick-or-treating, while the all-new Beware the Night turns the familiar zoo pathways into something much spookier after dark.

Living in Volusia County gives residents a front-row seat to Florida’s Space Coast, where rockets launched from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral are often visible from our own backyards.

Tucked away on Stetson’s picturesque campus, this little museum is a literal hidden gem, housing one of the oldest and largest geologic collections in the Southeast.

When Avery was around four, we took her on her first trip to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island. Scott and I had visited before she was born, and it remains a family favorite.

We usually spend our summers trying to be outside as much as possible, camping, hiking, exploring trails, and pretending Florida isn’t actively trying to melt us by midafternoon. But when the recent heat waves rolled in with record-high temperatures, we decided it was time for an indoor adventure. That’s how we finally found ourselves at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in downtown St. Augustine.

For Mother’s Day this year, we skipped the usual brunch scramble and decided on something a little different: a family day trip to Winter Park by train. It also doubled as a birthday celebration for Scott. As our resident train nerd, he got the Amtrak ride. As the mom of honor, I got to do whatever my heart desired.

For our family, blueberry season doesn’t start at the store… it starts in the fields at Ever After Farms.

Seeing a familiar place in a completely new way is always a treat, and this spring, Brevard Zoo offers exactly that with its limited-time Illumi-Nature Festival.

The Jacksonville Zoo is only about an hour and a half north of the Volusia County area, and while it is around the same size as the Central Florida Zoo in Sanford, it offers way more to see and experience, in my opinion.