Road Trip North 2025, Day 4: Panther and Manatees

 

After standing and walking for hours yesterday, I was really sore, especially my left foot. After breakfast I took some ibuprofen and put my feet up, and Travalon - that prince among men - ran to the pharmacy and got me an ace bandage. Between all that, I was able to walk enough to hobble around one of our favorite places in Florida, Homosassa Springs. (I have been to Florida enough to have a strong opinion about the best gas station bathrooms - Wawa, no question.) Every time we have gone there, they had some reason we couldn't take the boat, and today the water level in the creek was too low, so we had to take the tram. Then they let everyone on up to us (shades of yesterday), but the guy did take pity on us and let us sit in two empty seats that weren't together. This park never disappoints. Here are some photos. First, some sort of fish.

We have wood ducks like this back home too.

And foxes like this.

And even white pelicans.

But no flamingos, except for the time a tiny flock of five got very confused and ended up in Port Washington.

We have sandhill cranes right in our backyard!

But we definitely do not have white herons.

We have whooping cranes now and then at Horicon Marsh.

And we have black-crowned night herons. But maybe not as grumpy as this guy.

We definitely do not have brown pelicans.

This is a juvenile black-crowned night heron.

And here is one that is fully mature.

More brown pelicans.

We did not see spoonbills in the wild this trip, but there were plenty at the park.

Speaking of juveniles, this young wood stork was sitting on top of an enclosure where the birds that can't be released into the wild live, as if it would like to join them.

Here is an adult wood stork inside of the enclosure.

Another spoonbill.

Sadly, most of the creatures at Homosassa Springs are there because of mankind: injured in vehicle accidents, raised by well-meaning humans as pets and unable to survive in the wild, you get the idea. However, the Florida panther was abandoned by its mother, and although he was raised by experts, he still never learned enough hunting skills to live on his own. Travalon was ecstatic to see him. At first he was snoozing.

Another white pelican.

There are two panthers, but this must be Yuma, because when I said his name, he looked at me and meowed, while he didn't respond to the other name. Isn't he a gorgeous creature?

Here are the wood ducks again.

And there were so many manatees around, even babies! I had never seen baby manatees before.

We also saw a wild little blue heron.

And wild ibises.

More manatee pictures.

We went to the underwater observatory and saw so many fish.

Then we drove to Three Sisters Spring, which confusingly is in the parking lot for a strip mall, or at least the center is. Then you take a shuttle (or walk, but I was not up for walking today) to the boardwalk around the stunningly beautiful lagoon full of manatees.

We hadn't eaten lunch other than splitting a soft pretzel with nacho cheese at Homosassa Springs, but by the time we got to Cedar Key, it was dinner anyway. The place we love on the water was closed for the holiday, but we found another seafood place that was really good. Travalon got to pick three, so he had fried oysters, steamed clams, and blackened grouper, along with two sides of hush puppies and cheesy grits. I had a Southern Seafood Boil, which was full of crab legs, clams, mussels, shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, and sausage that I could have lived without. I forgot how much work seafood boils are to eat! But oh so good! (And messy.) Then we had Key lime cake for dessert, because we have had plenty of Key lime pie in our time, but never cake. And was that ever delicious! 

The restaurant had an extravagant light show set to music. Here are some photos.

And here are lights on the streets of Cedar Key.

Here are a couple of videos Travalon made of the light show at the restaurant.

Then we drove to Tallahassee, passing lots of Christmas lights. There are some photos on my phone of those, as well as the beautiful remnants of the sunset we saw on Cedar Key, but right now they are not loading to Boethius my computer, so I'll post them tomorrow.

We are staying at a swanky hotel in Tallahassee that was having a fancy New Eve party on the roof. We thought, we were at a party on the top of a swanky hotel in a capital city last year, why not do it again? The room is gorgeous and overlooks the old Capitol building and lots of Christmas lights (photo to come), but our key cards didn't work, so the maintenance guy let us into the room, and now we can't leave. This happened to us some years ago in a fleabag hotel outside of Memphis, but you'd expect more from a fancy hotel. They're too busy with the party to help us, and honestly the people coming for it were a lot younger and more glamorous than we are - I did not bring fancy clothes for this cold weather. Not thinking ahead, I guess. So we just watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV, and for once we are in the same time zone so it really was 2026 for us at that moment. Then a lot of fireworks went off all around us that we could see from our hotel room window, since we are reasonably high up, so that was lovely. And my New Year's toast was with a bottle of water they left for us in the room that hopefully they don't charge me for drinking. It didn't say there was a charge, but it didn't say it was free, either. Ah well, it was still a lot more exciting New Year's Eve than our usual ones that we also spend in a capital city.

Famous Hat