A whole week with no blog! What this means is that Rochelle was visiting (yay!)and we were having too much fun :)

Out hiking and geocaching

We visited with the manatees every day.The park counted all the manatees that came into the spring every night and there were usually 300-400! The park was wonderful but if you left during the day, it was hard to get back in because there was such a long line of visitors waiting to come in!

The ranger knows them all by sight and identifies them by their scars. Many have names and have been coming for years.

We went on a river cruise where we saw tons of wildlife, mostly birds. And, at the end, as if scripted, we saw two ospreys fighting over a fish and then both were being chased by a bald eagle. It was amazing! The fish was dropped, so nobody got him.

The black bird is a glossy Ibis

This Great Blue Heron had just caught an eel!

 

We took a day trip to nearby Hontoon Island State Park where we made sure to come back after the line of cars at our campground was gone. As we were driving, we realized that none of us, including the driver (me) had brought a  driver's license! Since we couldn't get back into the campground without waiting in a 2 hour line, I drove very carefully! At least Denny and Rochelle had some cash with them :) We took a ferry to the park and did some picnicking and geocaching. Fun day!

X marks the spot

We had to wait to take the ferry back to the mainland as they only had one boat and could only transport 6 passengers at a time per the Coast Guard.

On her last day we visited another "spring" park, Wekiwa Spring, and hiked and dipped our feet in the cool spring water afterward. Rochelle was very proud of herself, having walked 26 miles in the 4 days she was here!

We were sorry to see her go but it was time to move on to our next park, Alafia River State Park. We got here right at dark last night, so we'll check it out this morning. Rochelle returned the car for us, so we avoided another airport fiasco!