Visiting Silver Springs! Also, first time at Southern Palms

Here begins the real struggle with booking RV parks...we visited Southern Palms RV Resort, a Thousand Trails resort, for the first time...however, I could only get 12 days here instead of our normal 14.  We've never tried Southern Palms because it is a considerable drive to get to Disney World compared to the other Thousand Trails parks, but since we no longer have our Disney passes, we figured we'd give it a try (it was also the only park in the general area available for any amount of time at all for this period!).  Turns out the staff are very friendly and the park is nicely maintained.  They even have a maintenance guy come with you to your spot to help you park...mostly because they cram you in like sardines (though not nearly as close as we were at Winter Garden...) and want to make sure you're parking at the right spot in the lot to maximize everyone's free space.

Parking at Southern Palms...we didn't yet have
a neighbor on the right side of the photo.

While at Southern Palms we started searching for land to buy.  I've mentioned that we're thinking all the campground crowding and the price of diesel are getting to us and we don't know that we'll continue this much longer...our desired solution is to find a plot of land to build a house and live in the RV on that land while we do so.  We spent a few days driving around central/northern Florida and southern Georgia looking for land.  We found a beautiful plot in Georgia with a pond...but the neighbor's house looked like a junkyard, so we decided we did not want to deal with that.  The search continues!

The highlight of our stay was a visit to Silver Springs State Park.  This was recommended to us by a neighbor back when we were staying at Rose Bay, and finally at Southern Palms we were close enough to make an easy day trip of it.  We took the extended glass bottom boat tour and loved it!  According to the website, the glass bottom boat was invented at Silver Springs in the 1870s.  We found out on our boat tour that Silver Springs used to be an amusement park, owned by ABC Studios in the 1950s-1970s.  They had exotic animals and other entertainment, and filmed portions of several movies and TV shows at that time.  The state took the park over in 2013, removed all of the entertainment except the glass bottom boats, and let everything basically go back to the nature you expect at a state park.  The current boats have been running since the 60s.  We saw four manatees, several alligators, and tons of fish, turtles, and birds.  All the seats in the boat were good seats to view the glass bottom.

The unusually ornate entrance to the park seems to date back
to its time as an amusement park

Sitting on the glass bottom boat

You may have to squint just right, but we floated right
over a sleeping manatee!  (Also 3 more I didn't snag a photo of)

A movie prop boat abandoned on the
river's bottom

Keeping an eye out for interesting stuff!

Can you see the alligator lying in the floating grass?  This seemed
to be a favorite pastime for them

These are three statues of gods originally placed for a movie
and later briefly featured in things like James Bond's 
Never Say Never Again

We highly recommend the glass bottom boat tour at Silver Springs!  We saw so many cool things through the glass bottom (including the numerous springs, which really didn't photograph well) and the surrounding nature was beautiful.

Kelly Park and Florida Springs

Over the last couple weeks we discovered a wealth of gorgeous locations in Florida created by the presence of large springs.  Kelly Park, a county park in Orange County, was the cause of this discovery.  This is the only Orange County campground we hadn't yet visited.  A neighbor at Trimble Park told us last year that Kelly Park was a nice park and we should try it out.  'Nice' was an understatement!  Kelly Park has the largest campsites of all the county parks, with corresponding privacy, and holds the absolutely incredible Rock Springs.  Our former neighbors had told us that it could be difficult to get into with a big rig, but we had no trouble at all.  To be fair, there is a tight curve to follow if you follow the park's signs to the campground, and perhaps that would have been difficult, but the park ranger advised us to drive out of the park and pull around to the after hours gate, and when we did that we had absolutely no trouble getting to our campsite in our 40' RV.

Look at that massive campsite!

We wandered down to the springs and were completely blown away by the view that awaited us.  I was used to springs in Virginia that trickled down the side of a mountain.  I was completely unprepared for the gorgeous high-flow creek created by Rock Springs.  The water was completely clear and with the sunshine and trees it had a turquoise color that reminded us of the Caribbean Sea.  This spring is a popular tubing destination, and mid-stream the park built a reinforced swimming area, careful to prevent runoff from the ground and parking lot from reaching the clear water.  At only $5/car, this is a great deal for a family outing!  Pictures won't do it justice but I'll attach a few anyway.

The springs start in the cave behind the floats

My sister came to visit a few days while we were here, and we decided to explore some of the other springs in the area - Wekiwa Springs State Park (wekiwa means 'spring' so the name is kind of funny) and Blue Spring State Park.  Wekiwa Springs' primary focus was a huge swimming hole, which was still remarkably clear but did not have the pristine quiet appeal of the spring head of Rock Springs.  I think if you were to rent a canoe or kayak you might be able to see some more beautiful areas there.  Blue Spring was a real treat though...the park ranger let us know as we drove in that SeaWorld was there to release a rescued manatee!!  We couldn't believe our luck.  Apparently manatee sightings are very common at the park (the springs were full of manatees - the rangers counted 38 the day we were there), but it was such a treat to watch the recovered manatee released to the wild.  They told us that the manatee had been rescued 500 pounds lighter in February 2021 when she was suffering from cold stress.  She required CPR from a University of Florida veterinarian at some point to recover!  After almost a year of rehabilitation, she had grown to 900 pounds and they decided she was ready to return to the wild.

   

We also enjoyed seeing the other manatees in the springs - we're pretty sure we even saw one or two babies!

Mother and baby?

Not a manatee but it was hilarious watching this alligator haul
himself out of the water to sunbathe on the log

This is the released manatee - she fit right in with the 
manatees already there, and we could keep track of her easily
by the breakaway satellite tracker they attached to her tail

With my sister

We drove my sister down into Disney World one day to go to one of our favorite restaurants - Sanaa - where we enjoyed the 'bread service' and were treated to ostriches hanging out right near our table!

With my sister back at Rock Springs

As if all that excitement wasn't enough, we did do a few other things while we stayed at Kelly Park.  We bopped into Magic Kingdom one day - still VERY busy due to a marathon week at Disney World, happened across a very randomly placed Challenger memorial at a local school, and enjoyed biking, hiking, and wildlife watching at Kelly Park.

A memorial to the Challenger

These wild turkeys made a pass through the campground 
every day

We also spent a lot of time emptying our new waste tote over the two weeks!  Thank goodness we have it!  With regular water usage we can go about 2 days between hauling a load to the dump station.  (I know, you're asking: what about the 4 days you used to be able to stay off sewer? Well, with the waste tote, I don't haul the dishwater to the bathhouse dishwashing station anymore, and that makes all the difference.  Also, the tote only hauls 21 gallons from our 60 gallon tank, and we don't usually make more than 2 runs at a time.)  Aaron figured out a good way to hook the tote up to the car so he doesn't have to break his back hauling the tote to the dump station, which was particularly good this time because we were quite far from the dump station at this campsite.  We did have to do this once while my sister was with us, so she got some good pictures of waste toting in action!

Filling the waste tote from our gray tank

Aaron's rig to attach the tote to the car - the blue straps are 
ratcheting straps attached to the metal loops on each side of
the car (where the back door latches) - we added work towels
to protect the bumper

Emptying the tote at the dump station - I keep my foot on the
cover to prevent the elbow from popping out of the sewer hole

Overall it was an AWESOME two weeks at Kelly Park, and my only regret is that we missed out staying here the last two years!  Also, I think I've already booked the rest of our stays in the Orlando area (though we're still working out the details of when we want to leave), so we probably won't be back this year.  If you're in the area, check this out!  It's really an awesome place to be.

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!)

Manatees & a Hunt Camp

We enjoyed a few days south of Tallahassee at Newport Campground.  This was a county park unlike any we've been to so far - usually county parks have large day use areas and a campground in the back somewhere.  This park seemed to be more of a hunt camp provided by the county.  They even had a place to hang and gut your kill!  There was no day use area to speak of, and the size, arrangement, and privacy of the campsites felt much more like some of the lower-end private RV parks we've been to than a public park.  The campground was full but I only saw one child the whole time we were there - another oddity for county parks, which are usually filled with weekending families.  This is the only park we've been to that appeared to have long term tent campers.  So odd in so many ways.  However, it was convenient to our route, had a nice little river observation area (from which the long term residents said you could occasionally view manatees...no such luck for us though), and the campground host was very friendly.

Our campsite.  Aaron was quite strategic in managing to not 
really capture the campers very close on both sides in the photo.  They 
placed an orange cone at the front of the RV because they 
worried it was too close to the road and might be hit.

River Observation Deck

This is the first time I've been in a tidal area long enough to really notice the change in tides.  I've been on the coast plenty of times, but always just for that one point in time, somewhere mid-tide, where the extreme changes really weren't obvious.  I knew we were close to the coast, but thought we were far enough inland that any tidal action would be unnoticeable.  Not so!  It was really neat to observe the change in tides every day - we looked the tide schedule up so we could regularly go out to the campground's river observation area at precise high and low tides.

High Tide

Low Tide

There were two highlights to our visit in this area.  First, we went up to the Wakulla Springs state park, where we saw manatees right away!  There was one super close to the swimming area and then a mother and babies far off that we could only see a vague shape of through binoculars.  Apparently the high-volume spring is popular for manatee births as it is a relatively safe area for their babies.  The water was unbelievably clear, the first place we've seen manatees where you could see them beneath the water and didn't have to wait for them to surface.

First time ever we've snagged a picture
WITH a manatee!

Close up of the manatee in case you didn't 
believe the gray blob in the other photo :-)

Second, we drove down to the St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge and Lighthouse - conveniently our campground was at the other end of "Lighthouse Road" so we were as close as you could be to it!  Unfortunately the lighthouse itself was closed due to COVID restrictions, but the area around it was quite picturesque and we enjoyed walking along the beach.

Picture perfect day!

Walking along the beach next to St. Mark's Lighthouse

And our trek west continues!  We have one more stop in Florida before we leave this VERY LONG state and get to put another state sticker on our map.