Sunday, March 8: Crystal River, Fl

Today was quite an adventure. We started our day with a bike outing to the red brick and white steepled First Baptist Church of Crystal River. A large tree dressed in Spanish moss was the greeter to the parking lot. The 10:15 worship service was filled with wonderful uplifting praise songs and hymn singing and a message from Mark 9 on the miracle of Jesus’s healing. They had a video about a missionary in Alaska distributing buckets with Bible verses on them. God really is everywhere.

Tom got a recommendation for lunch from a church member and we went down to a waterfront restaurant named Charlie’s. When we came out, we found that the Florida Ford Model T club was also there for lunch, and the parking lot was full of antique cars. There were black front crank models and an amazing wooden sided “Depot Hack” that was maybe the first station wagon.

Then we went by the dive shop where the Manatee Tours departed where they were playing a video that they had taken that morning of kids swimming with the manatees. Manatees, sometimes called sea cows, are mammals and their nearest relative is the elephant. They have a stiff upper lip that they use to collect sea grass; they are herbivores. The Florida manatee winters in Crystal River. We decided to buy snorkels and take a tour of our own in the afternoon.

We were not sure where to go, but cruising around we found the biggest “redneck yacht club”(ie. The country song by the same name) we have ever seen. We guessed that the warm weather on Saturday had brought out all the young folks in the county and they had all their party boats pulled up in the shallows of the Crystal River National Wildlife Reserve. Just past the big party, there was a floating information center for the Manatee reserve; it was a zone of water by Banana Island closed for the manatees. We saw a large manatee flip over at the surface near there, so we thought that would be a good place to try out the snorkel gear. We swam there, and the water was pleasant, but deep and not very clear. We did not see any manatees.

Cruising farther we saw a wildlife ranger and he suggested Three Sisters Springs. Three Sisters is a complex of three spring areas with several large and small vents and sand boils. We found the place, and it was a good example of why the town is called Crystal River. The manatees are attracted to the warm fresh water that flows from caves at the bottom of the river. We anchored there and swam up a tiny inlet from the main water way, into a crystal clear pool. We saw fish and enjoyed swimming in the crystal clear water, but all the manatees were out for the day. One of the locals told us that there had been so many people there today that the manatees were avoiding the crowds and swimming out in the main river. It was great swimming in the clear spring on March 9 in Florida even if we didn’t see any manatee.

On the way back to the boat, we spotted one of the manatees that have been tagged with a transponder. The wildlife team has tagged them to be able to track their migration. We saw the sending unit bobbing along in the water behind it, followed it, and got to see it briefly as it surfaced. It was a great day.