March 20th: Homosassa Springs

The campsite here is altogether different. Plenty of space, and pitches carved out of the forest. However, the jungle is on your doorstep, and the security man warned us to be careful if we went on a particular circular path cut through the undergrowth because it was infested with rattlesnakes. Too late! We’d just walked it, birdwatching, fortunately without incident. This is the lots of space.

We are only a couple of miles from the Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park. It used to be a zoo until 1984 when the State took it over and now they only keep animals native to Florida, many of which are endangered species. The big attraction is the manatee where they treat injured specimens and return them to the wild later if possible. Manatees are aquatic vegetarian mammals whose nearest relatives are elephants. So they’re large, weighing up to a ton. These are gentle, sociable creatures, as the next photo shows.

They are injured most frequently by motorboat propellers, often fatally, but you can see one of the luckier ones with the healed prop scars on his back.

Manatees need warm water, above 20°C (70°F), and Homosassa River Springs provides it when the ocean winter temperatures don’t. The Park only encloses a small portion of the river and wild manatees use the main river to access the same warm water. It’s more difficult to photograph them in the main river, but this one came up to the surface at just the right time. It looks like a WW22 barrage balloon.

Can’t say we’re big fans of zoos as such, but here the same natural habitat applies to both wild and captive manatees that will be released anyway if possible. Other species held in the Park provided some good photo shots and seemed happy enough but perhaps held with less justification than the manatees.

Barred owls. Ideal as bookends.

Florida Puma. Melts into the background even on a sunny day.

Florida Black Bear. Cuddly looking, but powerful. Nowhere near as dangerous as the grizzly. Wouldn’t like to check that out.

The Park runs a boat up this creek to connect with their main visitor centre and car park. We didn’t have time to take it but it’s very picturesque and junglified. Watch out for those rattlesnakes! 

We spent a most enjoyable two days here, and now it’s time to move on to New Orleans. This will take us two days drive to cover the 600 miles. Many campers we’ve met here say we ought to stay overnight whilst in transit in a Walmart supermarket car park. Lots do, and Walmart is camper friendly. Also they have 24 hour security patrols, so it’s safe. We’re going to give it a try for our en route night, and we’ll let you know how we get on.