Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park- Homosassa, Florida

Crystal River, Florida  - Crystal Isles Rv Resort

Since Saturday was the first cool day in many months, we didn’t want to spend it indoors.  It was a beautiful warm, low humidity day and one of the reasons we love being in Florida in the fall and winter months.  It didn’t even get to 80 degrees!

We used our Florida Parks annual pass and got into Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park for free.  The normal admission price is $13 each.  The  $120 we paid for this pass is paying for itself.

It’s a pretty popular place because you can see many native Florida species.  We first started going there over 30 years ago before the state purchased the property.  They had all kinds of domestic animals including as well as many of the ones we saw today.  Once the state purchased the property they wanted to have only native species.  The wildlife here cannot go back into the wild for whatever reason.  Some have injuries that prevent them from hunting or flying and some have just been born in captivity and don’t know how to fend for themselves.  They also rehab injured Manatee and do a lot of very good work. 

The admission price includes boat rides on the river or a tram if you prefer.

The park is on the Homosassa River, which is another of Florida’s beautiful spring fed rivers.  The water is clear and a constant temperature of about 72 degrees.

The river.

Near the spring, the water is pretty clear.

In the winter months it is full of Manatee. When the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic waters are warm, they stay offshore.  When the water temperature cools down they go to the “warm” waters of the Florida springs.  Unfortunately many manatee are injured and killed each year by boat propellers.  They are slow moving and can’t get out of the way of boat props.   We only saw one manatee in the river.  The picture wasn’t great so I didn’t include it.  I’ll have lots more manatee pictures throughout the winter.

This is the underwater manatee viewing area.  In season, this place would be full of manatee.  There were none today.

We did see some large snook.

and a lot of other fish.

This park does a lot of manatee rescue and rehab.  The following picture is evidently kind of a “lock” to get the manatee into a temporary holding tank.

The next picture is the holding tank.   We saw 3 manatee in this holding tank.  They can be brought up to the surface to be treated.  Most manatee have scars on their backs from boat props.

We strolled along the paths and observed many beautiful animals.

Flamingo.

gators

Florida Panther

Bald Eagles

Swans

When the state bought the park and removed any non native species, there was an outcry from the people of Florida.  This hippo “Lucifer” had been a residents of the park since the 1960’s.  Then Governor Lawton Chiles signed a reprieve to allow Lu to stay.  He is 51 years old now.

He rolled over.  That is his foot you see in the picture below.

There are lots of pretty flowers.

Pinecone ginger

Bromeliads

There is a reptile area.  Not my favorite but Al wanted to go inside.

Florida Indigo snake.  He’s actually quite pretty.

Diamondback Rattlesnake

Copperhead

baby alligator

It was a perfect day to be outside and we sure enjoyed it.  Tonight is supposed to get down into the upper 40’s!   Brrr…   All of our winter clothes are in Georgia in our storage shed, including our nice warm blanket!  That’s okay though, we’ll still have the windows open!

Al informed me that Saturday night he couldn’t be disturbed as he had to watch a baseball game and two football games.  I tivo’d a couple movies and plan to go to my room!

Baxter found a small opening behind the couch.  We had already seen it and stuffed a pillow into the hole to keep the other cats out, but Baxter got in anyway.  It just goes under the couch and we can open the bottom to get him out, but we don’t like him climbing up the couch to get back out.  I filled up the hole and he was so mad.  He acted like a naughty two year old having a temper tantrum.  He was storming around, meowing and trying to pull the pillow out.  I finally decided to let him go back there and in a day or two he’ll find a new favorite spot.  The little stinker!

Here he is on the steering wheel.