Tuesday we traveled through the Everglade National Park, landing in Ft. Meyers. The Everglades were much different that I expected. They are mostly tall grasses called sawgrass without many trees. As we got closer to the gulf the mangroves started appearing. Very different landscape, and boy is Florida flat!..We are about 45 minutes from the beach and it is still pricey and hard to find accomodations. Note to self – next time we find somewhere, park for a month and Paul can drive to the dealers! It isn’t that bad but the price is crazy. Anyway, Wednesday we took a drive to a nearby park to view the Manatees. Manatee Park is near the Orange river where the power plant discharges warm water and the Manatee come when the gulf is below 68 degrees.
There were lots of Manatee and viewing them was very relaxing.
Lots of them just relaxing in the warm waters.
Once in awhile one would surface to take air. The park has a very nice nature trail and we took a walk. The river was very inviting and they have kayaks but it was pretty cool so we saved that for another day.
From there we took a drive to Ft. Meyers Beach and found a nice “little” beach that was called Dog Beach. It was very small but we were lucky and it was low tide so Duke got to play in the water and chase his ball!
A dog on a mission
Trying to hang on to the ball and not eat too much sand!
Within 5 minutes he was fully immersed in the gulf waters and a mud ball. In the parking lot they have a dog shower so he was rinsed off and we headed home.
It’s 5 o’clock and getting home and cooking was not appealing so I start looking for somewhere to get some seafood. We found this really cool dive of a restaurant that had patio seating and the dog was welcome. We sat on the patio along a canal and watched the sunset enjoying some very good grouper and fish tacos!
Check tomorrows post for more on the Manatee
Another beautiful, sunny, cool day