Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park
We have to admit that the Crystal River and Homosassa area made it to the list of places to visit in Florida after reading one of the popular travel blogs. We really liked the vision of meeting manatees (i.e. sea cows) and kayaking on a crystal clear river.

Manatees can be found in Florida not only in this area, but this place seemed special to us. Manatees are large aquatic mammals that inhabit both fresh and salty coastal waters on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to the Amazon. Manatees found in Florida are called Caribbean or Florida manatees. Manatees have no natural predators and no attacks by sharks or alligators have been recorded so far. Only man threatens manatees, which are often injured by motorboats approaching too close. From other curiosities, we also learned that manatees have only 6 cervical vertebrae, which means that they cannot turn their heads, and that their intestines are as much as 46 m long (!), which means that digestion takes them up to 7 days (and they eat mainly seaweed or lettuce if fed by humans).

In Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park you can meet not only manatees. A lot of other animals live there, which were placed there because they cannot live on their own in the wild. There are have various birds that, for example, have damaged wings, legs, are blind, there are otters that used to be someone’s pets, and there is the oldest living hippo in the world, Lu, who turned 62 this year (this is a hippo born in a zoo, which in his youth he acted in movies and would hardly be released into the wild).
The manatees we met in the park are also there, because man hurt them… some are so injured and have been living in the park for so long that they are unlikely to return to the wild, but from what we learned, 2 the youngest are due to be released in the spring. So this place is not a zoo just for entertainment, but a place where disabled animals can live peacefully.

Our kids really liked Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park and we spent the whole morning there looking at animals, books, skeletons etc. Gabriela said it was the 3rd coolest place we’ve been to (besides Disney World and the beach in St. Pete) . It is also worth adding that in the park we have an underwater manatee observatory and the opportunity to meet their guardians 🙂

Manatees can also be seen during organized trips by boat or kayaks. There are a lot of companies in the whole area that deal with the organization of this type of attractions.

The areas around Homosassa and Crystal River are mostly state parks that protect fantastic nature. The only problem is that most of them are only available from water. There are very few hiking trails, they are often unmaintained and unmarked. We tried to walk the Dixie Shores Trail in Crystal River, but it turned out to be full of mud puddles, and we were in sandals 🙂 We only drove up to Fort Island Beach for a while and went for a short walk there.

Weeki Wachee
Kayaking in Weeki Wachee had been planned for a long time. Somewhere by chance I saw a video on Instagram showing transparent kayaks, from which you could watch the manatees passing by. A bit of googling and I found an organizer of such trips. “Get up and go kayaking” offers transparent kayak rentals at various locations in Florida. Unfortunately, we were not able to go in such kayaks. Due to an upcoming storm, our booking was canceled at the last minute… and we were left without a plan for the day and with great sadness…
Well, but it is known that we do not give up so easily and we decided to save this day somehow. We went to Weeki Wachee to at least take a walk around the area. We visited Linda Pedersen Park, and there we climbed the observation tower. Afterwards, we took a longer walk on a rather wild trail. Gabriela wasn’t happy, because she was afraid that something would jump out of the bushes on us… After the walk, we went for lunch to the Upper Deck restaurant, serving mainly fish dishes (quite nice food), and there we barely stood on the balcony overlooking the river , we saw a manatee swimming by! And a lot of people in kayaks! Not transparent, but whatever. We did some research and it turned out that, unfortunately, 2 places nearby rent kayaks only until 12pm (and it was already after), but luckily we managed to find KayaKing Weeki Wachee, where we borrowed 2 kayaks without any problems. We managed to bargain up to $70 for 2 pieces. So we went on a 2 hour trip on the Weeki Wachee River. Unfortunately, we didn’t see manatees, but it was still a great experience and the kids loved it. It’s a pity that the first place got scared by the storm, because the wind was practically not felt at this time, but at least we paid a lot less for the kayaks (in Get up and go kayaking we would have paid $264!)

 

During our stay in Crystal River, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Crystal River, which was actually very decent. Clean, comfortable rooms – there was nothing to fault.
And let me just mention to you a great ice cream parlor that we managed to find in the area: Frozen In Time Gourmet Ice Cream. The ice cream parlor is run by a Pole (although he was born in the USA and does not speak Polish), who told us that he once met the Pope 🙂 Apart from ice cream, there is also bubble tea.