There be Manatees here, catch-up and a few pic's

We made it to the Crystal River area and found these gentle giants.

They have no fear of us and we fell in love with them! :) They are like big puppies! but sadly many show scares on their backs from thoughtless boaters.

If you look closely you'll see a baby pelican we were lucky enough to catch hatching (took about 15mins) Mom was very proud!

Sunset last night. We are currently at Top-sail State Park in Fl. getting ready to make our way back home. I've neglected our blog for a while, we have been making 1&2 night stays at some remote locations where we've had little or no phone and internet service. We will be here for 2 more nights then on to our next stop somewhere in Alabama, where they have something called a "Casino".  I have no idea what that is but Cindy says's I'll like it :)

Critters, zoo keepers, more critters + pic's

We loved our stay at Hillsborough State Park, we've had all kinds of critters visit our campsite, armadillos, owls, hawks, lizards, vultures, Cindy even had a Red Shoulder Hawk fly down and snatch up a lizard about 5ft away from her! I also had a very close encounter....

A bacon double cheese burger with two krispy kreme doughnuts as the bun!!! Not to worry, I survived, after a nap :)

We also spent two days at Busch Gardens where we paid a little extra to go behind the scenes with the zoo keepers and watch how they feed and use hand signals to get the tigers and orangutans to do some amazing things.  We were so close to the tigers we could smell their breath! Our favorites were the orangutans.

Everywhere we went we seemed to attract birds

These birds, the Ibis, are everywhere and are as pushy as a Detroit Pigeon, they'll take the food right out of your mouth!

Tomorrow we are moving camp and heading for the Crystal River area in search of Manatee's!

A cave, a storm, and our new digs near Tampa

Well, we made it to our new digs near Tampa, we will be here for 1 or 2 weeks at Hillsborough River State Park. On the way here we camped near Florida Caverns, who knew Florida had caves you could explore?

Some of the passageways were a little tight in spots (I left a little of my hair on the ceiling) but well worth it!

One of the local residents, but not to worry he's only about the size of my thumb.

We  made a one night stop at a horse camp, this is where we encountered the "storm of the century" ;)

 As you can see it's a big open area, nothing to block the wind. About 3am the storm hit waking us up from all the rain and thunder, we soon went back to sleep to the sound of the rain and all seemed fine...that's when the back side of the storm hit...55mph wind "moved" the camper. First ya say "sh*t" than you do it...lol.

Our camp in Tampa, Cindy says it like camping in Jurassic Park :)

pic from the picnic table

The wild life here is amazing!!! We have 3 or 4 Barred Owls right near us and they seem to love talking to each other, we go out and listen to them at night. This is the sound they make
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fppKGJD3Y6c
At night, with 3 or 4 of the them...haunting!