What do you do when you have a ton of frequent flyer points? Take a trip to Florida of course! We had an amazing time! The highlight of the trip was swimming with the manatees, which we did twice. We also went to the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. That was the best little zoo/park I have ever been to! Here are a few highlights of the trip.
These first few shots are at the Homosassa Spring Wildlife State Park. Hence the closeups of otherwise elusive animals.
Admit it. If you had seen a bald eagle in front of an American flag, you'd take a picture too. Cheesy or not.
This wood duck was actually wild. We took a boat trip down a river to get to the park, and we saw this guy on the way there. Looks fake doesn't it? But it isn't!
These next ones are from when we went swimming with the manatees. The water in Crystal River is natural spring water, so year round it is 72°. It was about 80° outside when we went swimming, so it wasn't horrible, but we couldn't stay in for more than about 20 minutes at a time or we got too cold. Most everyone else that was there had wetsuits and came in commercial tour boats. We just paddled over in a canoe and used life jackets to keep us a little warmer.
Brianna was tougher than Eli when it came to the cold. He wanted out a lot sooner than she did.
I know. So attractive in goggles, right?
It's hard to tell, but there are about 10 manatees in this picture.
One swimming under our boat.
This one was curious and followed our canoe for awhile. It's the same one as in the next shot.
The crazy hair picture! One day Brianna had just woken up from her nap and was playing with Eli outside. We snapped a picture because she was being so cute.
This guy is catching his breakfast.
Got it! (It's a crab)
Also eating his breakfast.
Eli saw one of these swimming through the water chasing a fish, and he said, "Wow! It's a ninja bird!" So, forever after any dark bird that we saw was a ninja bird.
Cameron saw this alligator while he was out hiking one day. It is about 10 feet long!
This is a blue heron and is one of my favorite photos. I just love the way the colors of the bird match the colors in the background.
Cameron always takes more photos of wildlife than he does of our family. I included every single family picture that he took, and I didn't even include half of the wildlife ones. Silly Cameron. If you have any desire to see some of his other wildlife shots from Florida go to his Flickr page.
