It's all about the manatees

We spent yesterday at the Homosassa Wildlife Refuge. It's a state park where they bring injured native Florida animals to rehab them and return them to the wild. They keep the ones that can't go back. They put on some pretty neat demos. There is one where they hand feed manatees and explain how they survive on their own. It turns out that manatees don't have much body fat so they can't tolerate cold weather. At water temps less than 68 they suffer from hypothermia and die, so they look for areas like crystal river that are spring fed and are at a constant 72 degrees. There is a huge population of them here in Kings Bay now and they are pretty cool to watch. The local economy is all about watching and getting close to the manatees. You can kayak with them, dive with them, snorkel with them or just cruise around in a boat and just watch them. They absolutely love their manatees down here and fortunately also are very protective of the manatee population. There are a lot of laws and rules that prohibit bothering the manatees.(You can get close but not too close) By the time we leave I will have a ton of manatee pictures.

Another favorite activity here is kayaking. There are tons of spring fed rivers with access points for boating and plenty of spots to launch a kayak and head out into the Gulf. We have done a lot of fishing from the shore but haven't started doing much kayak fishing yet. We have found a couple of excellent spots to launch our kayaks so hopefully real soon we will get more experience on this whole kayak fishing thing.

One big advantage of staying in a campground down here is the activities. There is almost always something going on if you want to get out and do it. Between golf, kayak trips, fishing and bike trips, there are plenty of outdoor activities available to enjoy this awesome weather. If you just came down here and stayed in a motel , there is no way you would find out about all the neat stuff there is to do down here. In the next week we only have Wed with no activities to participate in. That may change before then. This whole camping thing seems to be working out very well so far. (no Sheila isn't getting close to going bonkers yet, but she is getting a lot meaner. Maybe I am the one that will crack first,?)

I don't ever want to see snow again!!!