Blue Springs and Wakiwa Springs

Some of our friends who are native to Florida have been kind enough to show us some really great places to go here. A couple of weeks ago Alex and I went with Bevan and Naomi to Blue Springs. In the summer it is a beautiful place to swim, but during the winter it is a manatee refuge and swimming is not allowed. So we went to go see the manatees. There were tons of them floating around in the water, we even saw some alligators as well.


Here are a couple of pictures of the manatees we saw

Look how crystal clear this water is. you can see all the way to the bottom and it is about ten feet deep

Giant fish in the crystal clear water




Can you find the alligator in both pictures?

Just an awesome hollowed out tree we had to take a picture of

Today we went with Bevan and Naomi to Wakiwa Springs. It has been really warm here lately and we were able to go swimming. Bevan has introduced "Free Diving" to Alex and he has taken to it very well. Free diving is when you just have snorkel gear and a flashlight. You swim down as far as you can on one breath, after a lot of practice people can do it for two or three minutes, Alex is just learning and made it about 40 seconds, which is really good for a first timer. But he was still able to explore some small caverns during that short amount of time. Of course it made me a little nervous but I know he would not go down longer than he could handle. I however just snorkeled around with Naomi for a bit, then we laid out on the grass until the boys were done. There was some sort of festival going on so we were able to enjoy some music while we sunbathed.



Thanks Bevan and Naomi for showing a couple of kids from out west a good time :-) We can't wait to go again!