Florida (part 1)

We had never really explored the state, so we set out to do so over about 2 weeks. I’m actually going to tell this story out of sequence because we visited Savannah for a couple of days before actually entering FL. I’ll cover Savannah in my Georgia post.

Our first stop was to be Kennedy Space Center, but we had a little detour first. Heading down I-95, our trusty little Honda Fit (with only 180,000 miles on it) suddenly had a loud bang! under the hood, we smelled something burning, and the car started shaking and running really rough. Steve was able to get us safely off to the shoulder, and we proceeded to call AAA. Unfortunately, they estimated that they’d have a tow truck to us in 3 hours (we had miles to go before we slept), so a repair shop recommended we call PepBoys. “Only” 1 1/2 hours later (sitting on a piece of cardboard in the shade as semis roared by) the tow truck arrived and delivered us and the Fit to a repair shop in Jacksonville.

Amazingly, in all of our travels, we had never had a car break down! So add that now to our life experiences. :)

We had already bought tickets for the Space Center for the next day, so we rented a car at the airport and drove on down to Cocoa Village, just across the “Indian River” from the barrier island that Cape Canaveral is on. It surprised us that Orlando was only about an hour’s drive west of us.

The Kennedy Space Center is 3 miles away from the launch site on Cape Canaveral. The picture above was taken without any zoom.

I wanted to go to the Space Center to be up close to rockets and such, to get a personal feel for the magnitude of these things.

Above is a mock-up of the rockets that took the Space Shuttles into orbit. One of the actual Space Shuttles -

We did the “Shuttle Experience” (or some such name) that apparently does a very good job of allowing you to see what it feels & sounds like to be in the Shuttle for a launch. It’s really loud and amazingly bumpy.

I just liked the contrast of all the bright colors -

After retrieving the car (only 2 days after dropping it off), we were back on our scheduled itinerary over to Crystal River on the Gulf side, to snorkel with manatees! In all of our years diving, this was one creature we’d never gotten to see.

There are springs near Crystal River that are a constant 72 degrees year round, so in the winter, the manatees come in from the Gulf to stay warm. Even though they don't look it, they have very little fat under their hides. Our snorkel trip was at 0730 and it turned out that we were the only ones on the boat. I was expecting a ride out to the springs along the coast, but we ended up motoring about 100 ft off the dock and anchored in 3 feet of water where there were several “sea cows” enjoying grazing on the sea grass. The water was pretty murky, especially after the manatees passed by, stirring up the fine silt on the bottom -

Steve’s new GoPro got some great videos (as usual, make sure you have opened this post in your browser to be able to see these) -

And this one showed how close we were to the dock and shore -

They are truly “sea cows”, and we could see how easily they could be injured by boat propellers, given the shallowness of the waters in which they feed, as well as their need to surface to breathe. We spent 1 1/2 hours and got our fill, so I then came up and sat in the sun for quite awhile to finally stop shaking and shivering!

We then headed down to the Everglades, to explore that unique national park. Apparently there is no other place like it on earth. Soon after we entered the park on the 40 mile road through it, we stopped at a short (less than 1 mile) trail with awesome wildlife spottings.

This Anhinga was drying his feathers in the sun. Despite being a water bird, and hunting fish underwater, their feathers aren’t waterproof, so they have to dry them before they can fly.

There was no shortage of alligators to be seen, and this one was enjoying the sun, with his buddy, the Great Blue Heron. These were just off the main path we were walking along!

This was a common scene as we were driving along - all that grass is probably hiding large areas of water several inches deep…

… and then we’d see areas like this -

This was one of my favorite birds, the Purple Gallinule…

… check out her toes!

There were some very different pockets of plant life…

… depending on elevation (even if it’s just a few feet). Dry land ridges let these pines take root, and this species of palm thrives around them.

A few miles down the road, we found this…

… as a feeding area for Great Egrets…

… and White Ibis…

… as well as a nursery for alligators -

A common scene, as we drove along…

… until we reached the next unique stand of trees - this time, Mahogany -

At the end of the road, Flamingo is the post that signals you’ve reached (probably) the southernmost point of the “continental” US (not counting the Keys). Here we found an interesting cast of characters - Osprey in a huge nest, right in the harbor -

… Manatees to be seen from above…

… and a Crocodile!

The Everglades is the only place in the world where both alligators and crocodiles coexist. Alligators live in fresh water, but crocodiles prefer brackish or salt water.

This one was a young one, but we saw an adult in a pool on an another trail. Upon researching, we learned that if you can see bottom teeth, it’s a crocodile (alligators have an overbite and cover their lower jaw when the mouth is closed) -

I’ll continue this state’s coverage in the next post.

Watchu lookin’ at?