#335 Manatee Springs State Park

We made reservations to allow us to snowbird in Florida a year prior. Manatee Springs was our first stop. It's not for everybody because the closest town with everything was an hour away. There was no cell service. If you can get past this and we could it’s a great place. We got to Manatee Springs and settled in. Since there is zero T-Mobile cell signal you have to kind of step back and lose your need for instant gratification. There would be no Googling of anything in an Impulse way. If you decided you just really needed to make a phone call or check your email you would be riding the bike or walking down a fourth of a mile to the snack bar. This is where they rent canoes and they have a wi-fi hot spot there.

Chiefland is a small town nearby. From the main road, the state park is about 6 miles down a straight road to the park gate. I was able to aim the antenna towards what was Gainesville I'll believe which is an hour away and I was able to get maybe six channels. Two networks and PBS if you're lucky. It’s just one of those things that some places have great reception and some places have none. I decided no complaining was necessary. We had already realized that you wanted to go to a UU service it would be a 1-hour drive back to Gainesville. We would go to the service and lunch then at 4 p.m. we could catch some recovery meeting stuff and just make a big day out of it.

We had been walking 2 miles every other day in Franklin and then I caught a really bad case of the flu and it just took me down. I stopped and then was cold weather and then I was busy and all of the above. We knew we had to get back on the routine so at Manatee springs we got back on track. There was a 1.6-mile loop called the sinkhole trail and then we walked that several times.

Down below the snack bar area was where the spring outflow poured out of the ground towards the Suwannee River. There was a nice boardwalk all along with the creek spring flow that ended at a large boat dock.

This is where the manatees hung out so we walked down there regularly. We would pick a trail and walk two miles every other day the whole time we were there

I still had the task and fixing the double kayak before India would be willing to do any paddling. Even after the leak was repaired, she didn't have that much enthusiasm about going out yet so I went out one day and had a nice paddle in just the single kayak.

I got some cool pictures of some wading birds and the vultures that were perched up in the trees. I saw a manatee as I was going past the dock area You only see their noses when they come up for air. It was a neat thing to do and it made me feel very good about the area being protected for the manatees to feel this comfortable. Of course, I also solve a motorboat screaming in the river which kind of makes me realize that on any given day they tend to get their backs chopped up by propellers.

I remember being at Wekiva Springs the year before in reading a sign that said the spring was releasing 40 million gallons a day coming right out of the ground from an artesian spring. I thought this was unbelievable. I got down to the water and look at the sign that described Manatee Springs and it said it was called at first magnitude spring.

At this level, it releases 150 million gallons a day. I was blown away by these numbers and was just amazed at how much water is it pouring out of the aquifer down the creek. When we first arrived I saw all this water flowing not realizing it was the spring. I thought to myself it would be roughly the paddle up against this current because I thought it was a river. It was the springs starting from a dead-end a hundred yards to the right. That was an eye-opener about the flow rate.

We enjoyed our time at Manatee and this point, all of my tub fixings were finished and I could move on to something else. There's always something to piddle on or fix during the week and each Sunday we would go to Gainesville for the UU and recovery meetings. Normally we would head to Florida about January 1. This year we left NC about December 1. We had felt like the family folks had their traditions and we had been out of that loop so long we didn’t seem to fit anywhere. It didn’t seem all that Norman Rockwell- ish the year prior so we figured why to stay much past Thanksgiving.

On Christmas Eve we went down to Crystal River to maybe do some Manatee watching. The place we were going to go to was called the three sisters nature area. We drove down and we found It was closed. We went back a few days later and we were going to participate but it was about 12 or $15 per person just to enter and they say you're almost guaranteed to see a dozen manatees.

I just felt like it was kind of overpriced so we ended up going to a movie and a nice had a nice dinner. It was just one of those little day trips that's kind of fun to do but was not as planned. On another visit down that way we went to the State Park hiking trails and did a good 2- and 1/2-mile hike where I got some nice pictures of India. The trail meandered along what resembled the intercoastal. It was the Crystal River.

We had gotten to the end of a trail which was a one-way loop and there was a park bench there and we were just sitting there watching the water go by. India missed it but I saw a bird flying by that had a pretty good-sized fish in its talons. I got a big kick out of that.

During one of these for a trip to Crystal River, we decided to go buy an old haunt that we had been to the first time we were in the area years ago called Tidewater trailhead. We just nosed around to see what it was like. We were just looking for a place to have lunch.

We had made a big ol Sunday lunch for a covered dish to take to a recovery clubhouse thinking they're going to have one of those all night long Marathon meetings finishing up with a lunch. It turns out they didn't so we were all dressed up and nowhere to go. We took the ham that Aunt Nancy mailed to us and some all gratin potatoes with cranberry surprise. We sat down at a picnic table picnic shelters at Tidewater trailhead where the National Forest Park office was. We just enjoyed our meal and used it as a way to do some reconnaissance on whether this would be a good place to stay or not as they had hookups at this park. We were looking for a little place to go to in between Manatee and Wekiwa as I had a 3-day Gap there. We chose to go to the boondock we had used years before.