Just get on any major highway, and eventually
it will dead-end in a Disney parking area large enough to have its own climate,
populated by large nomadic families who have been trying to find their cars
since the Carter administration.
~Dave Barry
Sunday, November 30th
Manatee Watch
We started out the day at the Tampa Power Plant where we saw our first wild
manatees! It was thrilling for about...5 minutes. But manatees
are not exactly wild or thrilling, they are very calm and just sort of float
and occasionally pop their noses up and breathe. Yep.
That is steam coming from the cooling process, the warm water will be dumped into the bay, making the water 82 degrees, which is nice for the manatee.
See the lumps?
Manatee!
+_+_+
Then we decided we had not seen enough floating
sea cows and drove up to Homosassa Springs State Park, where they had other
animals, but nearly all of the mammals were snugged up indoors due to the
tornado warning. Eep
It rained ALL day, you can see the rain in most of the pictures. There
were several covered spots to stand under and so we were able to keep out
of the worst of it, the rain came in waves-sometimes barely anything and sometimes
it was so hard we could not see through it.
Happily, the reptile house was inside-and heated!
The kids settled down at the educational center to draw some manatees themselves.
The boys also worked on puzzles, it was pretty funny to see them all busy
with the little distractions there.
Our last stop in the park was the underwater viewing center!
The manatee in this tank can no longer live in the wild, they have been too
damaged, nearly all from being hit by boats or having trash wrapped around
a flipper or tail and being deformed because of it. It was heart wrenching
to see these giant and gentle creatures hurt, all because of careless humans.
Admitedly, one of the freakiest face cut-outs we have seen yet!
Waiting for dad to bring the van around
This street was many blocks long, all overhanging branches like this.
A tree in a field, I needed a picture of it.