Manatee Mania

 

February 5, 2022

 

Manatee Mania

Upon departing Cedar Key, the next stop on our unexpected Florida vacation was at a place that we had just recently visited last fall, Crystal River. We had gone there previously last fall during their off-season to swim with manatees and just take in the area, where we had not previously spent much time. It was a wonderful time and a magical experience swimming with the few wild manatees that make the area their home year-round.

This was a totally different, though just as magical visit. The cold weather had drawn the manatees into the coastal springs for warmth as the spring water maintains a temperature of about 72 degrees constantly and it is perfect habitat for the manatees when the temperatures of the gulf and ocean dip below that.

We started our visit at the Three Sisters Spring in Crystal River. On our previous visit, Kathy and I had been able to swim in the spring itself, which at that time did not have any manatees and was open for swimming. During the winter months when manatees congregate, the springs are closed to all swimming and you have to view their natural beauty from the surface.

It was an incredible sight as the spring contained about 300 manatees of various sizes and ages, packed in the warm water to rest, frolic and stay warm. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it as the manatees were lined up, side by side, filling most of the available area with-in the spring and crowded around the small opening to the bay, swimming in and out of the area pretty much constantly. It was a beautiful and wonderful display of these amazing, docile creatures and we stayed there watching, hiking around the trails along the water and watching these amazing animals.

Seeing them in that sort of concentration through the crystal-clear water of the springs was just about as cool as swimming next to the giant animals and offered us an entirely new appreciation for their beauty and fragility. Manatees have been suffering a tremendous die off in the past couple of years, mostly due to the die of their primary food, seagrass.

After spending a good part of a day with the manatees, we drove into Central Florida to Orlando where we visited yet another Florida stalwart that we had just recently been to when we headed back to Disney World. We had purchased annual resident passes when we were there in December and figured we might as well head back to take advantage of basically free admission.

The first night there we went to see the new film “Licorice Pizza” at the AMC theater at Disney Springs then headed to Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park the following morning. We tried to hit as many rides as we could that we did not ride on our most recent visit.  It was way more crowded than on our previous visit, but we were under no timeline to try and get everything in and we used the new Fastpass replacement system to good effect to reduce wait times.

It was fun being back at Disney so soon and Kathy and I were able to just leisurely enjoy the place and roam around taking in things like the cool kite show that we did not see last time. It was a pretty impressive show with kites and kite boarders roaring across the lake at the center of the Animal Kingdom.