SAVE THE GODDAMN MANATEES

We’re going to see the manatees today, so Mum can stop her complaining about not getting to see them. We left the trailer around 10:00am since the drive over to the State park is around an hour long. Well Blue Spring State Park was a very popular place today because they were having a manatee festival, so it took us another twenty minutes just to get into the parking lot, mostly thanks to the abundance of tour buses that were flowing in. We got ourselves parked and made our way over to the boardwalks to observe the graceful manatees. Well, we thought we’d see a few, a dozen at most. We were wrong. There were hundreds of them all sleeping and gliding together in the water. A lot of them had scars caused by boat motors which was sad. We walked up and down the

boardwalks, watching the manatees. At one point, we saw a small manatee burrow into the side of the river shore. It was funny to see them breathe too, they would just stick their nostrils above the water and blow out a mist. They were super cute. We had our lunch at one of the picnic tables in the park. While we were eating, we heard some music filtering down from the old homestead on the ground so we decided to go check it out once we’d finished. The band was all right, although very country so not my type. Then we wandered down a bit more and found a little section with a café, a gift shop and a small theatre with a manatee documentary narrated by Leonard Nimoy. We

watched a bit of it but it was sort of hard to hear. Then, in groups of two because Kizmet wasn’t aloud in, we took a small hiking trail down the where the source of the spring comes up out of the ground. Manatees can’t survive in temperatures lower than 18˚C, which is why they like the stream so much because it’s essentially a hot spring. It was a really pretty area and the hole in the riverbed was neat to see. Apparently, at certain points in the year, it’s open for cave diving which would be so cool to do one day. After that, we wandered around a bit more before hopping back in the car and heading over to the Buffalo Wild Wings a couple blocks from out trailer. The NFL game between the Patriots and the Broncos was on and Dad wanted to watch it. We ordered some wings and I fooled around online for most of the time. The Broncos won, but it was close. Then we stayed a bit longer and watched the first quarter of the Panthers/Cardinals game. It was basically over after the first quarter anyway, since it was already 16-3 or something to Carolina. At the trailer, we chillaxed for the rest of the night before heading to bed. Peace out m8s.

#camping #orlando #florida