December 10-11 2012 Salt Springs, Florida

Yesterday I was beat from paddling Alexander creek, 7 miles, fighting water weeds and back tracking to find our way through, so we relaxed. I told John I wanted to go to Silver springs/river and ride the glass bottomed boat. He decided since we were going to do a tourist thing he dressed as a tourist. Fortunately the glass bottomed boat does not run on Mondays, so I did not have to be seen with him in public. I rode my lawn chair in the sun. I decided to get a little exercise in the afternoon and rode my bike. I fell off twice on the dirt road because the sand was so deep it sucked my tires down.  Today we snorkeled in Salt Spring here in the park and saw big bass, a blue crab,mullets, crappies and  looked down into the spring outlets. Very nice, sunny 70’s. Then we took our boats out into Salt Spring run to look for manatees. We found three. A huge one, a medium sized one and a baby. 

John in his tourist get up.  I need to work on an outfit for me for our Christmas photo. Salt spring run.

John on Salt Spring run. The baby manatee came up to John and let him scratch his head and belly. The baby was as big as John’s boat. If you look closely in this second photo you can see a manatee. They didn’t show up too well, it was under my boat and much, much bigger than the boat. They are very friendly, have no predators, except people in motor boats- the props cut them up pretty bad. They are kind of like water cows, they don’t do much but eat and don’t move very fast.

These lizards were eating ants down by the spring, a stork up in the tree, an anhinga on a sign and a black vulture.  We also saw great blue herons, egrets and some kind of ducks.  For dinner we went to the Bass Champions down the road for their beat the clock specials. What ever time you are seated is the cost of your entrée.

Some décor in the Bass Champions, and John with our meal. He had catfish fillets, cheesy grits, garlic bread and my hush puppies. I had a chopped steak and a salad. Our entrees cost $5.10 each. They would have been closer to $4 , but I wanted to take a shower before going out.

Our Florida Christmas decorations, a star fish (they call them sea stars now) painted like Santa and a gum tree seed, painted silver and glittered. They are hanging in the window over the couch.