Manatees Everywhere!

Blue Springs State Park

Emily and I went one cold Florida morning to blue springs national park to go check out the manatees. Every year when the weather gets colder, the waters begin to get colder and manatees move up river or up stream to warmer waters, which results in a beautiful opportunity to see hundreds of manatees at a time! Every year manatees flock by the hundreds at this natural spring, and on this day there were 711 manatees counted that morning!

This was a very chilly day, imagine Emily and I'd surprise that we were still cold, even with wearing double layers of leggings, sweatshirts and beanies. We only drove an hour from home, but in that hour we noticed the temperature dropped almost 20 degrees, and back home everything was lush and green while here looked like the dead of fall in Tennessee. Since this is a special natural phenomena, it was a very popular spot to be. You either had to wait an hour or more for a parking spot to open up, or you had to get lucky and find an open public parking lot in the town and walk to the state park. Emily and I ended up getting lucky, and parked at a nearby baseball field. We only had to walk a half a mile to the entrance of the park, and we ended up walking with a crowd and felt very safe. Once in the park, we had a couple miles walk to the spring itself, and by the time we got there our fingers were numb and we could see our breaths!

In our couple hours visit at the springs, we saw several bald eagles nesting in trees and I personally counted over 300 manatees on our half a mile stretch of the spring. It was amazing to see so many manatees, with groups huddled together for warm, and hearing their snorts as they rose for air. The babies were also super cute, and I hope next year to get some really cool photos.

So for now- enjoy a few of the photos I took this day, as most of the time I was either in awe not taking photos, or my fingers grew too numb to even press the buttons. ;P