Oh, the huge manatee!

We decided to do something fun so we visited Manatee Springs State Park. It's only about an hour from our home. We left around 10 and drove to the park. Manatees like to swim in the spring water during the winter when other water is too cold. There were 5 manatees in the spring. We weren't able to get really close to them but we took some pictures. They spent most of the time under the water, with brief nose pokes above the surface for air. The park is quite nice. We walked around for a little bit looking at the river, trees, and animals. There were nice boardwalks we walked along. The funniest thing were the mullets (the fish, not the hairstyle) jumping out of the water. Every couple of minutes a fish would jump out of the water; sometimes they would jump three or four times. Further down the river we saw some big gars (another type of fish - they have long noses). I surprised myself by knowing what they were. Another neat thing we saw were all the "knees" of the trees that grow out of the water. The knees are roots that grow out of the water to help the trees get more oxygen. We also saw some turtles. No alligators this trip though. The park had a nice big playground where Anwyn played for a few minutes before we ate lunch. There was a nice black vulture hanging around the picnic area. It's left wing looked like it was injured and it spent all its time walking around on the ground. If it had been a turkey vulture, I'd have thought that it might have been delusional and thinking it was a turkey. [As a side note: we have vultures all over the place here - turkey and black vultures. You can't go anywhere in the city without seeing them flying around]. Anyway, back to our vulture friend. It seemed quite tame. I approached it and took pictures. When we were eating, it walked over to a table by us and hopped up on the bench, so I sat down at the table to talk with it. It was looking for a handout but we didn't feed it so it wandered off after a while. I could have touched it if I wanted to but I didn't want to be introduced to its formidable 3 inch beak.

The park is a nice place to go scuba diving, snorkeling, and swimming. The springs pump out millions of gallons of water every day and are connected to a large network of underground and underwater caves (about 5 miles of them have been explored in the Manatee Springs area). So, it's a popular diving area. We weren't allowed to go swimming in the springs because the manatees were there. The water stays at 72 degrees year round so it would have been chilly anyway.

We decided to go see the Gulf Coast, since we were pretty close anyway, so we drove over to Cedar Key. On the way I saw something in the road - it was a snapping turtle. We stopped to let it finish crossing the road. We even managed to take a picture of it, although I had to erase a video off the camera memory card first. Anyway, it was fun to see a big turtle cross the road. Cedar Key had one small sandy beach. The rest was all docks and shops. The Atlantic Coast beaches are much nicer (than Cedar Key, at least). We enjoyed looking at the pelicans and other birds (well, Kristi didn't enjoy the birds so much, especially when a flock of seagulls swooped down to grab a cracker I had dropped out of our car: "Mine! Mine! Mine!"). We walked around the dock area a little bit and then let Anwyn play on the nice playground. Kristi and Anwyn dipped their toes in the water. We read a sign that said, "Don't feed dolphins." We didn't. Of course, we didn't see any either. On the drive home I saw a gaggle of turkeys on a side road. It was an eventful day.

Click on this to view photos from our day.

Good Children's Book

A while ago I randomly grabbed a book of the shelf at our library. It turned out to be really good.

Banjo Granny by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Author), Sarah Martin Busse, and Barry Root (Illustrator).

Alligator!

Anwyn and I visited Lake Alice today to take some pictures and walk around. We saw an alligator in the lake. I didn't think we'd see one in the early afternoon but there was one swimming along contentedly in the water.


I also took this photo of the chapel by the lake. The lighting is poor but you get an idea of what it looks like.