We went north of Orlando a few miles and visited Blue Springs State Park. It’s January, and the Manatees are here. On the day we were visited, the count was 380 animals.
Blue Springs State Park is based around an underground spring that remains a constant 72 degrees F year-round. When the seawater gets below 66 degrees, the Manatees start looking for warmer water and Blue Springs, with its proximity to the St. John’s River, is high on the list.
In summer months, Blue Springs is a popular park for swimming, snorkeling, and scuba diving. The springs offer a chance for divers to explore a cave system that descents more than 100 feet underground. There’s a campground too, so visitors can spend several days.
The crystal clear waters of Blue Springs State Park are home to Manatees in the coldest winter months, but in the summer, it’s a popular swimming hole. Snorkeling and Scuba diving are also on the list. The spring that feeds more than a million gallons of water a day river extends down more than 100 feet into the earth.
We were all set to venture into British Columbia and re-visit some of our favorite destinations in Banff, Jasper, and Lake Louise, but after looking at the weather reports nearly every day on our Alaska Cruise, We finally came to the conclusion that spending time in British Columbia this year wouldn’t be the best use of our time.
There were reportedly over 500 forest fires blazing away north of the border, and the smoke and haze wasn’t any better than California, Oregon, and even Washington. Since the primary goal of this trip, other than enjoy ourselves, was to capture some new wildlife and landscape images and videos. With 500 forest fires in the area, it didn’t make sense.
But guess what? South Dakota was reporting nearly normal visibility, so we made some quick changes to our reservations and came to Rapid City, where we based ourselves as we made our way around Custer State Park.
Custer State Park is located near Rapid City, SD. While there are plenty of campgrounds and lodges close to the park, Rapid City offers everything a medium sized city normally has. It’s a good option if you want to visit the park by day and have all the amenities of the city at night.
Custer State Park is probably one of our favorite destinations for seeing wildlife. With its modest rolling hills covered with plains grasses, it’s a great place for grazing animals to hang out. We typically see bison, deer, antelope, and more when we visit here and this time was no exception. In addition to a multitude of prairie dogs, we found coyote, deer, bison, and antelope on this trip.
We have visited Custer State Park in the past, and wrote about it once before here on HiddenMesa. You can see the post here.
A short video documenting our trip is in the works, but in the meantime we’ve put together some of our favorite images from this trip. Here they are:
If you were blindfolded, taken to Goblin Valley and told that you had just walked through a Stargate and were now on the mysterious red planet Entrada Prime, it might just be believable. Goblin Valley State Park near Hanksville, Utah, is just that kind of place. Just a little imagination, and you can easily pretend that you’re not on Earth any longer. In fact, portions of the space comedy “Galaxy Quest” were filmed here because of the unusual shapes of the rocks. In the movie, some of the rocks were alive and attacked Tim Allen!
In the red rocks of Utah, almost everyone has seen the famous Delicate Arch of Arches National Park. While most people haven’t actually walked up to it in person, they’ve at least seen it on the Utah State license plates. The walk up to Delicate Arch is three miles round trip, and is a bit more than some people want to tackle.
There’s another arch that attracts a lot of attention too, and it’s just ½ mile round trip from the closest parking area. That’s Mesa Arch. Mesa Arch is located in the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park. It’s popularity probably comes from the extreme red glow it seems to emanate, and the close proximity for viewing when you arrive. You can almost reach out and touch it, but not quite. Continue reading →
The Real Florida. That’s what they call the Florida State Park system. Whether you agree is up to you, but when you venture out and away from the theme parks of Orlando, you certainly see a different side of Florida. Yesterday we traveled over to the west coast of Florida near the town of Silver River to a great little state park called Homosassa Springs State Park. Our purpose was to visit the wildlife exhibit. This park has a great exhibit of animals indigenous to Florida, including the Florida Panther, bobcats, deer, and many dozens of species of birds, including the endangered Whooping Crane. There are also several alligators and manatees here. Continue reading →
A good deal of the recreation in California in the summer months centers around water, or the highest parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Pacific Ocean brings mild weather with ocean breezes, and the Sierras offer high altitude relief from the constant heat of the San Joaquin Valley. The truth is, for all the great recreation available in California, it’s a hot, dry landscape in the summer months. It’s not called the “Golden State” because of the gold rush in the 19th century, but for the golden fields of dried up grass. For the most part, the summer in California is a dry, uncomfortably hot place. Continue reading →
We’ve all seen the classic western movies depicting life in the west, and the glorious days of the American cowboy. The “wild west” has always seemed like the place to be in a perfect world, and, of course, Jesse James was made into a hero by American folk lore. Of course, make any trip to a restored ghost town that has a minimal museum, and a good look at the dental tools used back then could probably change your mind about the glory of the old west. Those were hard times. The people who lived then did not enjoy everyday luxuries, and the tools used (it’s hard to call them “instruments”) by dentists paint a picture of the wild west that’s anything but fun. Continue reading →
