Trip 7b – Blue Springs State Park

Breaking up the drive home was a great idea. I wonder who thought of that? We had been to Blue Springs before by kayak but had never stayed here. It was a perfect distance to stop for the night. Our journey started with an hour traffic back up just as we started to leave and then when we stopped to get gas the key would not turn on the van. A quick search through the Travato Owners and Wannabe page on Facebook gave us the answer. We had to unplug the battery and reattach it. We also stopped by the local Ram dealer to make sure there was nothing else wrong. They confirmed it was just that the key got out of sync with the van and resetting the battery was the fix. Frustrating but good to know. This Facebook group has helped us on more than one occasion.

We were able to get to the park before sunset and were able to explore and relax from a long day of driving. The park is going through some maintenance so the long boardwalk to the headspring overlook was closed due to it being rebuilt. We were still able to see the manatees swim up the river to the spring for the evening. We woke up early to walk to the spring to see the manatees leaving for the day to feed on local seagrass beds in the St Johns river. The temperature was in the low 40’s which made for good manatee viewing. There were over 70 manatee and there were a few moms and babies. It was good to see that most of the manatees did not have boat strike scars on them.

Wildlife sightings: Manatee, Bald eagle, Reddish egret, Wild turkey, Turkey vulture, Cormorant, Anhinga

Moments of Nature

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