Manatees!!!

Our last stop on our big winter Texas loop was at Crystal River, Florida.  This is well known for being the only place you can legally swim with manatees, and it also happens to be the home of the Crystal Isles RV Resort (Thousand Trails), so we decided to swing by on our way back to the Orlando area.  Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, this is the second largest spring group in Florida - the largest (also frequented by manatees) being Wakulla Springs, where we stopped on our way out of Florida in January.

Crystal Isles was a nice resort, perfect for boaters - a whole slew of the sites had their own personal docks, and there was a communal dock and boat launch for everyone else.  There was a nice pond with fountains in the middle of the park, and all of the sites were massively huge by RV park standards.  Several of the permanent residents had their RV, an outside patio/bar area the same width, and another width for a storage shed or boat.

Campsite at Crystal Isles

Our first order of business was to swim with manatees!!  I'd been looking forward to this for WEEKS, ever since I booked it.  Luckily for us the day I picked turned out to be a gorgeous day.  We were on a small tour - only one other couple - with a friendly and talkative captain who told us a lot about the area and manatees in general.  The reason the manatees are so attracted to this area is that the springs output a massive volume of constant 72 degrees F water year-round.  We arrived on the tail end of the real manatee season, but found a group of about 10 of them hanging out near the springs.  Unfortunately they were all behind the rope humans weren't allowed to cross, so we didn't get any up close and personal touching like you see in videos, but we did get a good look at them up close and underwater, and one tail got about 3 feet away from where I was swimming, so that was pretty exciting!  Truly massive creatures when you get so close!

Ready to swim!

Also ready to swim!  Our tour boat and captain are in the background

Manatees!!  Unfortunately all the underwater photos came out 
cloudy through the waterproof phone pouch

Floating outside the boundary, manatees in background

There were lots of hiking and biking trails all around the area, so after peaking the first day with the manatee swim we did a lot of hiking and biking nearby.  Our most major excursion was to the 7-mile trail at Crystal Springs Preserve State Park.  This was one of the longest natural (aka not paved) trails we've attempted on the bikes, but fortunately the roots and potholes of our western travels were absent here and we only had to deal with mud ruts and grass.  We saw several alligators - definitely back in Florida!

Redfish Hole

Biking the 7 mile trail

Alligator on the 7 mile trail

We saw TONS and TONS of fiddler
crabs in the salt marsh

Our last day we drove to Fort Island Gulf beach, where we enjoyed the tide pools and found yet more manatees in the wild!  Sadly we weren't fast enough to get their adorable noses surfacing on camera.

Tide pools at Fort Island Gulf Beach

Lots of birds were just hanging out on the rocks near the shore

Aaron thought I was going to slip off
the wet rock for sure...nope!

The whole area had a relaxed and beachy/vacation-y feel to it.  I loved it, but Aaron thought the smaller non-highway roads to get here were a little too stressful in the 40' RV, so if we ever come back it will probably just be in the car.

Happy pi day!  (This is my first ever
coconut cream pie - turned out great!)