2 RV's to Seffner FL (delivered)

... spending the night at Fort Myers FL

I am up during the night and walk to the bathroom 'light.' Almost there and ... YIKES ... I meet someone coming out of the bathroom ... ME :) I almost walked into the full sized mirror. That woke me up a little more than I wanted to be at that time.

Later ... Awake first at 6, up at 7 AM.

Breakfast - not what we expect from a 'nice' hotel. Three of the four juice choices were water. The fourth was listed as OJ but was mostly water. They did have omelettes, I took one. And sausage, I didn't take one. Other than that it just seemed cheap.

BB and I split my leftover Philly from last night. So for me it was 1/4 of my original Philly, 1/2 my omelette and most of my left over onion rings. I was full.

Seeing we had just ate and the main reason to go to the local Strawberry Festival here in Ocala was to eat ... we didn't go.

Instead we choose to go to the Three Sisters Springs in Crystal Springs. It was listed on one site as the best place to see manatees.

Coming into Crystal Springs we see a vacant enclosed shopping mall. I had to look it up :)

Seems it was opened in 1990 with four anchors. Belks, Sears, JCPenny and Kmart. It started going down hill almost right away because other new retailers were building their stores in another part of town. The mall finally closed in 2022. There is still one Rural King store in the former Sears. Rural King is a small version of a Fleet Farm.

1st stop is the Visitors Center. There are a few signs that say 'No manatees seen today.' There was a line so we had to wait. After hearing others talk, it seemed like a waste to pay $13 to walk on a few trails when we walk at the Circle B Bar Ranch for free.

Before we got to the counter we decided against walking here. As we were walking to our car we saw a trail across the highway but it was a city busy city street so we were going to drive to the other side of the road. By the time we looked at a map for a place to park, we decided against that also.

So we are both sitting in the car looking for things to do. The fourth thing on our list had been Homosassa Springs. It looked about the same price but everything that was written about it sounded better.

2nd stop was Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. We couldn't tell from the write-ups if we 'might' see wildlife from those area's or we would see them because they were in cages.

Both this place and the last have little or no parking at the park. You must take a bus, boat or tram. We opted for the tram because the boat was a longer wait. We weren't in a rush so we should have taken the boat, but didn't.

It turns out the animals are in 'small' cages along a board walk. The area started out as a train stop in the early 1900's. In the 1960's it because home to animals used in TV shows when they were not working and additional income for the owners. Since the 1980's it has been some kind of park and is now as State Park.

One of those TV animals was a hippopotamus. That hippopotamus is now the oldest living hippopotamus in captivity. It was born in 1960, they can live for 60 years in captivity so it is over 'average.'

Lu was eating hay when we got there and then went into the water where it still was when we left a couple of hours later. All it has is a few feet of cement to eat off the ground on, the rest of the area is water. No grass to roam on.

Other than that there are birds, fox, bears, deer in cages similar to what we have in our state zoo, except these are smaller.

One interesting story from the signs by the animals. There are several versions of this story one line, but part of what is posted on the sign near them says "After several years of detours to visit Peepers, Levi became a park resident. Although fully flighted, Levi stays here due to his strong bond with Peppers."

These two are Whopping Crain's. Peppers was injured and can't fly. Levi flew back to see her six times. Each time Levi was removed until the park finally decided he could stay.

After an hour, we needed a break and went and sat inside where there was AC and ate ice cream (It turned out to be our lunch for the day) Then we stay another hour before we were back to our car.

After ice cream we saw the fish and the deer. It seems the manatees come to the spring waters because they are warm. These spring waters are always 72 degrees, if the temps are in the 80-90's like this time the manatees will not come to the springs. If the weather is closer to freezing, there will be 100's at each spring area. Last year they said they counted 400+ here in November.

When we are ready to leave we don't know where we are going ...again. It is 3+ hours to Tallahassee where the weather will be cooler. 3+ to Jacksonville on the other coast. And 4 hours down to Fort Myers by the Everglades. No reason, we just started driving south.

3rd stop was the Pilot near Dade City. From here we made a hotel reservation in Fort Myers. Where we could get a reservation was also an issue. It is a weekend and winter still in much of the country. Not every hotel has 'free rooms' right now.

4th stop was because we were low on fuel. Flying J in Punta Gorda.

5th stop is a block from our hotel. Fat Katz. The temps have cooled so we sat outside. BB had their special, chicken sandwich with strawberries. I had a Philly with chicken rice soup. Good, but not wild rice and the broth was not as thick. I only ate half, breakfast again tomorrow.

6th stop is the Comfort Inn in Forth Myers.

Load board

US - 211

IA - 81/80

Not sure hour plans for tomorrow. We did see traffic backed up on the freeway for a county fair :) Or maybe we will go back to the Strawberry Festival after dark when it is cooler. Or maybe the Everglades? We do want to be back to within a couple hours of our next rental car by tomorrow night.