Weeks had gone by since I had stepped foot in a state park. My life could feel the effect of this and not in a positive way. My mood was altered and if I didn’t get my fix my world would not be good or right. There were a cluster of parks that I was going to see when I did my New Years trip but I left a night before scheduled due to non-stop rain so I thought it would be good to try and visit them now.
We woke up super early and headed north to Fanning Springs. You could tell this would be a great park to visit in the summer but this spring was clearly not set up for winter visitors. We walked around the swimming hole where a man was starting a scuba diving class and I even got to see a few manatee floating around the water; enjoying the peace and not having a lot of people in the water with them.
There was a pretty cool boardwalk to follow at Manatee Springs where we didn’t actually see manatees but we did see a lot of Cypress trees and their little knees. On our way to finding Cedar Key Scrub we got to drive through Cedar Key which looks like a pretty awesome town. I can just imagine the atmosphere when the town is crowded with summer traffic.
We found the Cedar Key Scrub and honestly spent only moments there. I’m not saying it’s not a beautiful place to visit but I think it’s just better to be seen via the waterways. The Cedar Key Museum, however, was pretty cool. It’s funny how some of the museums I want to explore and others I just don’t. At this point I had just dropped my brand new phone into the toilet so I had to give the photo taking duties over. I narrated the tour while she snapped the pictures. Saint Clair Whitman was a pretty cool person and the shell collection was amazing.
We had one more park on the list to visit for the day and off we went to Waccasassa Bay. Little did we know the GPS would take us off roading and heading straight for the water since that park was accessible by boat only!
