Swimming with manatees in Crystal River
Story: We decided to go swim with the manatees for Nikki's birthday so we went up to Crystal River to do this. Kings bay is one of the only, if not only, place that you can do this legaly. We rented an 8 seater John boat from Crystal Lodge Dive Center for 17.50 an hour. Once on the water, it takes a while to get to the springs as you have to idle most of the time because of the manatees in the water. Three sisters was our first stop. There were dive boats with tourist stacked on top of each other in the canal. Once in the water, you ajust pretty quickly to the 72 degree water which in the Summer is freezing but when the air temp is about 70 too, its not as much of a shock. Manatees were everywhere inside and outside the shallow spring! Once inside the spring, you could see them hanging out on the bottom sleeping. They would wake up from time to time and swim past you.Once back in the boat we went around to Big Spring but decided not to swim here as its 30 feet to the bottom so kinda hard to see anything. Once back to the dive shop, we had lunch and snuck into the next door hotels pool area and hung out in the spa. Very nice!Shortly after that we packed up and headed on over to the campsite at Tillis Hill.By far, one of the neatest things I have done. Glad I could share it with good friends!
Tips: If doing this, Crystal Lodge Dive Shop is the only place to rent a boat. You can call ahead and reserve them but reservations expire at 9am so get there early. The manatees only hang out in the springs mainly for sleeping and will leave as the tide lowers so you want a decent high tide prior so that they are in the springs to begin with. The rate to rent the boat is 17.50 per hour. We had ours for about 3. You can take a guided tour but wheres the fun in that? Most swimmers were wearing wet suits but we didn't except Karl had a shortee. The water temps not a big deal.The dive shop will play a video for you so that you know what and what not to do.
Camping at Tillis Hill and caving at Dames
Story: First, be sure to check out the Crystal River trip as the camping was the night of and the caving the day after.The campsite was real nice. Tillis Hill is the only camp ground in Withlacooche State Forest that you can make reservations so we chose that one as it was about a half an hour from Crystal River. They have showers and facilities there in case thats something you need. We camped on site 27 & 28. 2 tents, 5 people, 15.00 bucks and 2 cars per site.While Karls stew was cooking over the fire, Nikki looked up a goecache and off we went. On our way to the cache, Chenelle got after a cut down pine tree with the axe seperating the bark from the stump for the fire. We found some grubs in the bark so Tyler and I pulled a Man vs Wild and ate them. The cache was in what I think was an old strip mine area. It was 20-25 feet deep with steep sides. Really neat place to find! The cache was cool too. It was in an ammo box under a rock next to a tree and servival themed. We took sparlers and left a lighter. The log said that we were the first to find it in 2010!Once we got back to camp, we ate drank and played some manhunt.The next day we got off to the caves which was maybe 10 minutes away. Vandal was kinda soggy but Peace was dry. This is always a neat thing to take in.
Tips: The cave hike is short and an easy walk. Bring water for sure. In the summer months the bugs are ruff around the caves so pack spray. The caves can get muddy as well,
