Blue Spring Afternoon

Sunday March 4, 2012
Blue Spring State Park Site 41

 

  We knew this was going to be a rainy day.

 

The rain actually started about 9:00 last night and was really pouring in the early morning hours.  The wake up temperature was 43 degrees after a high of 88 yesterday.   45 degree drop over night.  Kind of shocking.
  .

 

Not sure what it was about the rain and temperature drop that put David in the cleaning mode but it’s such a rare thing I thought I’d better post it. J He said I took the picture to make his butt look bigger since I’ve been remarking that with the weight loss he’s lost his butt.  But actually I posted it to show how good he is feeling.   He actually vacuumed the carpets AND hand mopped all the floors.   Took about 20 minutes.  LOL

 

So with the rain and all that activity, it wasn’t until afternoon that we were able to get back outside.  We walked back over to the spring to see if the cooler temperatures had persuaded any manatee to come into the run.  But it hadn’t.  So we decided with the temperatures not warm enough to tempt even me to go swimming in the spring waters, we’d try out the Pine Island Trail.

 

 

 

 

 

Under normal circumstances, a 9 mile hike in flat territory would be a go but in this situation we thought we’d just hike for a while and see.  Not far down the trail we found these remains.  Possum we thought.  They blended in so well that we almost didn’t see them.

 

 

 

The first section of the trail was really lovely.  What they call the “original Florida”

 

 

 

That dead ended into some sort of sandy road that went on and on and on and on and seemed to be going nowhere.  This isn’t what I call a hike.   David didn’t notice so much since he was talking to his namesake nephew David Jeffrey on the phone.  I never bring my phone on hikes so I guess that’s why no one called to distract me.

 

 

But I got tired of road hiking and decided it wasn’t worth 9 miles of this or even 4 miles of this.   So we turned around and when we got back to the “real Florida” trail, we stopped for a bite to eat.

 

This was our live wildlife sighting on the trail.

 

 

But David also spotted these two favorites – BIG TREES

 

Tree hugger still in action.

 

We closed out the afternoon with another manatee check at the point where the river meets the spring run.  No luck but still a nicer day than we’d thought we would have for our last one at Blue Spring.

 

Tomorrow it’s back to Lithia Spring and treatment round #2.  But we definitely have to come back here for a swim in the lovely Spring.  It’s much more natural than Lithia which is more “developed”.