Things to Do in Satellite Beach

Before paved streets and residential blocks took its place, a maze of wetlands rife with rustling wildlife thrived in Central Florida. Such a scene is hard to imagine amid a backdrop of loud car horns, but skeptical visitors to The Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science can travel back in time and see it for themselves on a stroll through the museum’s 19.5-acre nature preserve.

This remarkable preserve joins special exhibits dedicated to regional and cultural artifacts in fulfilling the museum’s mission to keep Florida’s heritage alive in the minds of its current inhabitants. Since the nonprofit facility first opened in 1973, an influx of state and philanthropic funding has spawned further expansion. One of the most crucial add-ons, the Taylor Wing, now houses a nonstop procession of visiting exhibitions and the kid-themed Imagination Center, where young hands can touch actual fossils of mammoths and 8-track tapes. Popular ongoing exhibits include large dioramas of local ecosystems and the Windover Story exhibit, which illustrates how the residents of Brevard County lived 7,000 years ago.

When Mimi’s Crafts was founded in 1995, two dreams were fulfilled: Mimi turned her hobby of molding clay and painting ceramics into a full-time business, and her husband got his garage back. The walls of Mimi’s studio flaunt more than 1,500 blank ceramics, the vast majority of which were made in store. During pottery-painting sessions, visitors let their artistic instincts run wild as they daub figurines with scintillating paints, before their completed designs are immortalized in a fiery kiln. The studio’s experts stay on hand to offer helpful tips on stenciling, arranging color combinations, and forging Michelangelo’s signature. Aside from pottery-painting sessions, Mimi’s Crafts also hosts classes in the arts of glass fusing, clay molding, and acrylic painting.

The Mindfulness Center presents people with classes and therapies that take a holistic approach to well-being, complementing—and sometimes eliminating peoples’ need for—more traditional health-care options. These empowering treatment modalities encourage the body’s natural healing processes, using everything from yoga and tai chi movements to reiki therapy and acupuncture. Collectively, the center’s extensive and highly trained staff members can help correct energetic balances while relieving the physical aches and pains caused by daily stress or nightly dreams about Olympic powerlifting.

Sheri’s enthusiasm for creating vivid illustrations began long before she founded Bali Studios in 2007. As a little girl, she used to wile away the time drawing mermaids and turtles—a passion that continued into her adulthood and led her to pursue a dual degree in art and elementary education. Today, Sheri opens the doors to her oceanfront studio for arts and crafters of all skill levels and ages, spurring their imaginations during easygoing classes and events that yield hangable and wearable pieces of artwork. Bali's various painting classes encourage participants to strew colors over blank canvases to form sea-inspired portraits of whales, pelicans, ocean scenery, and banana boats sunk by prickly fish. For those looking to festoon their footwear, Sheri also paints fetching designs—such as budding flowers, frothy waves, and soaring birds—over shoes and boots that visitors bring in.

David Lane and his business partner started their sports-rental shop inside a cramped garage filled with surfboards, kayaks, and paddleboards—items they used for sports they practiced themselves. Lane’s favorite part of his job is “helping people participate in the activities I enjoy,” and his business has grown to a full-size store that stocks paddleboards, surfboards, and bicycles and leads guided excursions. Inside, displays house surfboards adorned with sunsets, beaches, and coconut trees hand-painted by a local artist, alongside similarly painted canvases to display at home galleries or hang on monochromatic surfers. The owners also deliver rentals free of charge to customers, dropping off surfboards at the beach, taking kayaks to watery trails, or delivering bicycles to cruise ships’ port of call for passenger day trips.

Additionally, the store offers excursions and lessons, including surfing lessons, guided kayak trips, and adventurous surf-fishing trips to hook ocean creatures from tarpon to 9-foot sharks, which the store has helped tag for a research project with NOAA Apex Predators Program.

Bikram Yoga on the Island's founders, Suzanne and Joe Elliott, draw inspiration from their students' physical progress and development each week, ensuring that each session addresses the needs of first-day students, casual practitioners, and lifelong yogis. Ten years of experience fuel Suzanne and Joe's work as instructors, with each tapping his or her encyclopedic knowledge to guide pupils through two breathing exercises and 26 poses. Along with a staff of instructors, the two founders demonstrate and describe the proper execution of each posture with the authority of an Olympic Twister medalist.

As students fold and unfold limbs, each movement helps promote healthy organ function by pushing freshly oxygenated blood throughout their entire bodies. Meanwhile, the studio's heating system helps them safely sink into each stretch and sweat out toxins by raising the temperature to 105 degrees with 40% humidity. After class, attendees can freshen up with the studio's indoor and outdoor shower facilities.