This is another guest post from Kate of Gardening Without Skills.  We thank her for sharing her Florida adventures with us.

Blue Spring State Park

If you’re in Central Florida and want to get away from the theme parks for a day, you can enjoy a day of Florida State Park hopping and get back to nature. From the attractions you can hit Ponce De Leon State Park and Blue Spring State Park in one day. If you’re staying Orlando, both parks are about 40 miles away, but it’s not a straight hop, so it’ll take about an hour to get there.

We went to Ponce De Leon Park first where we filled out bellies with pancakes at The Old Spanish Sugar Mill, then drove about 20 minutes north to Blue Spring State Park. This park has two sides to it – in the summer people cool off in the crisp spring water and SCUBA dive and snorkel in the 120-foot deep natural spring; in the winter swimming is prohibited so that the endangered West Indian Manatee can take refuge in the warm 72 degree spring water, so people stay on the boardwalks and oogle the manatees. Blue Spring is the largest spring on the St. John’s River and was once home to Native Americans. Now it’s a recreation hot spot year-round and I’ve heard it often closes on weekends when it reaches capacity. It wasn’t crowded at all when we visited , but I can’t imagine Monday mornings are busy anywhere. It costs $5 to park and you need to have cash for the parking lot attendant.

We were there on an unseasonably cold day, so we knew we’d be in for a pretty good day of manatee sighting. Every morning a park ranger gets in a canoe and paddles down the length of the spring counting manatees. You can call for a manatee count in the morning or you can just read the sign at the parking lot attendant’s booth. When my friend went in January 2008, she said there were about 200 manatees. When we went there were 52 – still a good number.

There is a large boardwalk that goes alongside the full length of the spring with plenty of places to stop and see the manatees and lots of informational signs. It was a windy day, which caused the water to be a bit choppy, which in turn made photographing the manatees difficult. It’s much easier to view them with a calm water surface. Nevertheless we saw a lot of manatees even if they didn’t photograph well.

It’s quite a picturesque area with gorgeous tall palm trees and sparkling blue-green water. The manatees just sort of float around trying to stay warm and the onlookers lean over the boardwalk railing anxiously awaiting one of them to stick a big whiskery face through the surface of the water and take a breath. When one takes a big breath everyone cheers and the photos start snapping. It’s a very odd thing to watch groups of people standing around waiting for an animal to breathe.

Unlike watching lightning-fast dolphins play, manatees don’t really do much. They’re called sea cows for a reason – they just sort of float around and eat grass.

We were lucky enough to see Gene. He’s easy to spot with the huge floating tracking device hanging off his tail. He’s a large male manatee that was released at Blue Spring in 2006 after 30 years in captivity. This is his second winter at Blue Spring and he looks fat and happy and surprisingly not irritated by the huge float hanging of his rear end. We heard it’s on a special hook-up where it’ll break free if it gets entangled on something.

There’s a lot more to do at the park in the winter than manatee watch. There are river boat tours, hiking, camping and even air-conditioned cabins. You can also tour the Thursby house, which is a large plantation-style home was built upon a shell mound in the mid 19th century. It’s a really great day out with the family to see ‘real’ Florida and give your children a memory that doesn’t focus on long lines and cartoon characters.

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