Cedar Key, Florida

I started Thursday off with a true vacation breakfast: S’mores Oatmeal. Yessss. With peanut butter and banana, of course.

There was a forecast for rain on Thursday, so instead of checking out another spring we headed to the little fishing village of Cedar Key.

We went to lunch at “The Pickled Pelican”. I chatted with a lady on the street and she recommended it, saying the food was fantastic. She told no lies.

I ordered a Caesar salad with grilled shrimp. I almost tried their house special, a heart of palm salad with dates, fruits, a whole bunch of other stuff and to top it off: Peanut butter and ice cream dressing. I decided to play it safe (and I guessed much healthier) by ordering the Caesar. 

I tried some of my mom’s Grouper, which I had never had before. So delicious.

Christian claimed he “HATED SEAFOOD” and ordered a burger. After he actually tried some of our seafood he recalled his former opinion. A gal I talked to in a store we went to told us about this Osprey nest you could go see.

Baby crabs!!

The rain ended up holding off until late that night, so we got to go swimming one last time at “our spring” after we came back to the cabin. Friday morning we got up at 4:15 and headed for home. We arrived yesterday afternoon to chilly Michigan. I’m ready to go back south. For good.

Manatee, Fanning, and Hart Springs

Tuesday morning we spent relaxing at our hotel on the beach, and I took a walk with my camera on the beach. After packing everything up, we were on the road to Fanning Springs by noon. We arrived a couple hours later to our state park cabin, which was GREAT. We stayed at Fanning Springs State Park, and loved the cabin there. It was nice and roomy, with a full kitchen, living/dining room, screened in porch and two bedrooms.

Our Cabin

Fanning Spring

Look at that clear, aqua-blue water! It’s about 15′ deep here.

They have a diving platform over the deepest spot.

After swimming in Fanning Spring, which was just a couple minutes’ walk from our cabin, we went about 15 minutes away to Manatee Spring, which is much deeper but about the same size. What great snorkeling! The water is crystal clear, and a refreshing 72° (22° C) degrees.  I will update with some photos from the underwater camera when we get home, but I don’t have a card reader with me for that memory card :(

On Wednesday we visited Hart Spring (pictured above) to swim, and stopped at Otter Spring, but didn’t swim there. They are both much smaller, private springs that you have to pay to enter. ($12/car load) I wasn’t that impressed with Hart Spring after snorkeling the gorgeous Manatee and Fanning Springs. They were also doing some construction and the sprinklers were on, which didn’t add to the atmosphere. We talked to some people who were also swimming there, and they said the spring is drying up, and didn’t used to be this shallow. There was also a lot of alge that occupied area that could have been good for swimming.

While we were at Hart Spring, we did get to see three divers surface. It was pretty cool to see them come up! There is an underground cave in the deepest part of the spring-fed pool, which leads to an extensive cave system, they told us. You can see the cave snorkeling, the entrance is only about 11 feet under…. Kinda creepy looking down into the blackness if you ask me!

Otter Spring was really small, but would have been a better place to swim than Hart, I thought. It had a deeper, larger pool where the spring came out of the ground, and was surrounded by grass and live oaks.

There are lots more springs in this area, but the ones close to our cabin were “blacked out”, or flooded while we were there. There were a couple about an hour away from our cabin, but after all the driving we had already done we decided to stick around Fanning Spring and swim there instead of trekking around more. If you go here, don’t miss Fanning and Manatee Springs!

Read about the springs…

You can read more about Florida’s Springs here.

Another great resource, here. “Underwater Florida”

Fanning Spring’s State Park Website. 

Manatee Springs

Saint Augustine, Flordia

On Monday we decided to head into the town of Saint Augustine and do some sightseeing+meandering about the historic district.

First stop was Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the US. I read up a little on it, and found out that for a little while it was renamed “Fort Marion”, in honor of Francis Marion, who was one of my childhood heroes+crushes. I think the fact that I had a* crush on a (dead) historical figure was probably due to insufficient exposure to the world, not having a TV until I was 9, and being home schooled.

*Ok, not just “a”. There were more. Robert E. Lee was in my top 10 as well.

After touring the fort, we walked around the historic district, and also came across a little shop I read about on UrbanSpoon: The Hyppo. It’s a little gourmet Popsicle shop, where they made new flavors daily and use fresh, natural ingredients. I got the Pineapple Sangria, which was tasty, but after trying my dad’s Key Lime I wished I had changed my order! 

Saint Augustine still has a Spanish feel to it. (Speaking of Spain, I have news!) I loved walking through the tight little streets, with flowers hanging down on either side and colorful tile work on the stucco walls.

The boys took a helicopter ride over the city, and Mark snapped this shot of the beach.

After two relaxing + sun filled days here, we headed to Fanning Springs to snorkel and swim in the freshwater springs. As always, more photos coming soon :)