It started with a lunch date in Lake Placid, Florida. A friend of Marcus’s from New Hampshire had bought a home in Bradenton, on the west coast of the state, and wondered if we would like to meet somewhere in between there and Stuart for lunch. Sure! What’s a two-hour drive amongst friends?

But then we started thinking: If we’re going to drive halfway across the state, why not drive the whole distance and make a mini-vacation of it? I scanned my brain: What have I had a hankering to see on the west coast? It took all of a few seconds to decide—manatees!

Winter is manatee season in Florida. When the water temps in the ocean and gulf are chilly, the manatees come into the rivers and lagoons where it’s warmer. Power plants, with their warm wastewater effluence, are a draw, but the main focal points in the state are the underwater springs, typically a cozy year-round 72°—a veritable hot tub for a manatee in winter.

No less than fifty underwater springs feed Kings Bay in Crystal River, on Florida’s gulf coast, making it the second largest first-magnitude spring system in the state, according to Wikipedia, and a popular winter home to hundreds of manatees. (Wakulla Springs is the largest first-magnitude system.) I’ve always wanted to visit to see a multitude of manatees in their natural winter habitat, and this, being February and a chillier-than-average winter, seemed like the ideal time.

Of course, we made these plans in January, when the weather was much cooler. It’s warmer now, but the temperatures are still dropping into the 60s overnight. We have seen a few in the early morning. Stay tuned for more wildlife adventures….