Crystallized Sunshine

All Roads Lead Through Florida

by

Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge 

On a cool, late-December morning, a thin layer of fog hovered over the emerald-green waters of Three Sisters Springs at the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. Arriving as the gates opened, we walked the boardwalk alone, searching the waters below us for signs of life. A ripple drew our attention, and the massive shape we had mistaken for a stone poked its snout through the water’s surface, sucking in a breath of air. We’d officially spotted our first manatee. 

The day before, I had departed from New Orleans at daybreak with my husband, Paul, and our three boys to launch our epic, nine-day road trip in search of exotic wildlife and highlights of the Sunshine State. We cruised into our Airbnb long past sunset and briefly explored our new home before spreading the maps and guidebooks across the kitchen table. The first stop on our Florida journey was Crystal River, a coastal city about halfway between Gainesville and Orlando, and a popular wintering home for hundreds of Florida manatees. A distant relative of elephants, these mammals crave warm water—which draws them to the constantly seventy-two-degree spring water bubbling up in the seventy freshwater springs of Kings Bay, adjacent to Crystal River.

During peak manatee season, the Bay can get crowded with tour groups and kayakers, but the protected National Wildlife Refuge offers the manatees a safe haven only shared by the local fish. Sprinting around the boardwalk, our boys were stopped by a volunteer, who fascinated them with stories of manatees’ “marching molars,” which grow from the back and gradually push the old teeth out the front. She pointed us beyond the boardwalk down the trail, where we encountered several skittish rabbits and were rewarded with the most adorable view of a mama manatee with her calf riding on her back. 

Cracker’s Bar & Grill 

We caught an early lunch across town at Cracker’s Bar & Grill, sitting outside overlooking the expanse of Kings Bay. Our waiter, Dylan, gave us insider tips on the best places to fish as we feasted on scallops, redfish and grouper sandwiches, and coconut shrimp. While we relaxed in the sun, savoring the last bites of our meal, what appeared to be a female Jack Sparrow paddled up to the restaurant’s dock in her pirate-bedecked kayak and sauntered up to the tiki bar for an early afternoon drink. None of the other customers batted an eyelid, so between our giggles and slack-jawed stares, we had to assume this was just another Monday in Crystal River. 

Kayaking Kings Bay

Besides its enviable view and great food, Cracker’s is located right next door to Captain Mike’s, where you can take a tour to swim with the manatees, or as we did, rent kayaks to paddle Kings Bay at your leisure. We opted for two tandems and a single and set out to explore the local springs. The Bay proved a formidable foe, pushing our arm muscles to their limits as we pulled ourselves through her waters. When a paddleboarder sprinted past us, her dog hanging off the front and helping paddle, I realized it must be the dead weight of my sightseeing seven-year-old, Bryce, that reduced my tandem to a crawl along the surface. The battle was deemed worth it, though, when a two-thousand-pound manatee tagged us as a friend and followed alongside our kayak like a lost puppy. 

Crystal River Archaeological State Park

Day two found us enjoying an early morning stroll among the burial and temple mounds at Crystal River Archaeological State Park. For sixteen hundred years, Native Americans used this area as a ceremonial site, and artifacts from their prehistoric lives are housed in the museum. We scaled the steps of the impressive Temple Mound, standing tall on the banks of Crystal River. With manatees traveling alongside the seawall just below us, it was easy to see the lure of the location as a sacred resting place. 

Swimming with the Manatees

Heading back to town, we snagged wetsuits and joined the lines for the outdoor dressing rooms at Hunter Springs Kayaks & Tours, where we had booked a “Swim with the Manatees” tour. Our expert guide, Elise, led the group down the street to the pontoon boat waiting at the dock. She and our driver, Matt schooled us on the dos and don’ts of manatee etiquette and gave us newbie snorkeling tips, such as assuming the skydiver’s pose for more restful floating. Matt skillfully steered us away from the crowds to an unnamed spring in Doreen’s Cove, and Elise ushered us one by one into the shallow water. 

Despite knowing that it’s completely safe to breathe through a tube attached to your mouth, the unfamiliar experience did take some getting used to. When Bryce—clutching me like a life preserver—and I finally stuck our heads underwater, we were shocked to see an enormous manatee heading straight for us. The rules were clear in my head—stay calm and stay still. Unfortunately, that all flew out the window when Bryce started screaming and backpedaling, dragging me along with him. For a split second, I locked eyes with the manatee and gave an apologetic grimace before she veered off toward our less excitable snorkeling mates. 

Elise then led us to the source of the unnamed spring. Schools of fish seemed to dance in the water flowing out of the ground, diving deep into a small cave-like opening and shooting back to the surface. She explained that when the surrounding water becomes cooler, manatees huddle together around the warm springs, nearly stacked on top of one another. On the ride back, Elise warmed up the group with hot chocolate and marshmallows while we reflected on what a surreal experience it was swimming alongside these gentle giants. 

Kane’s Cattle Co.

Famished, we made our way over to Kane’s Cattle Co. and refueled on Wagyu burgers and short rib phillies. Our eleven-year-old, August, couldn’t resist the Kane’s signature alfredo and stared in wide-eyed wonder as an enormous plate of pasta landed before him. The sign over the bar read “Leftovers are for quitters,” and all I have to say is that August is not a quitter. Not only did he nearly lick the plate clean, but then all three boys topped off their meals with candy-laced milkshakes served to-go in mason jars. 

Hiking & Fishing in Crystal River

After lunch, we waddled along North Citrus Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare, popping in and out of boutique shops searching for souvenirs while burning off the calories. With an afternoon of daylight before us, we drove Fort Island Road to the Redfish Hole Trail. The 1.4-mile hike led us through a picturesque marsh and some open water where our thirteen-year-old, Charles, threw in his fishing line. The fish here were stubbornly ignoring him, though, so we tried again down the road at Fort Island Trail Park’s pier. As the sun went down and the boats passed in front of us on their way back home, Charles hit the jackpot with mangrove snappers, reeling in the greyish pink fish as fast as he could cast his next bait.

Michael’s Bromeliads 

From Crystal River, we continued south. For my plant-loving husband, we made our first pit stop in Venice at Michael’s Bromeliads, Inc. As we browsed the stock at Donna’s Secret Garden, Michael Kiehl himself showed up and gave us a golf-cart tour of his collection. More than three thousand bromeliad varieties spread from wall to wall within his fifteen shade houses, a veritable Disney World for the plantophile. We managed to leave with only a few small specimens due to the limited car space, but Paul has since bookmarked his online store, and shipments are most certainly forthcoming. 

Big Cypress National Preserve

In Naples, we turned east on the Tamiami Highway and soon entered Big Cypress National Preserve. After a tour of the Nathaniel P. Reed Visitor Center, we pulled out the ice chest for a picnic at the H.P. Williams Roadside Park, where alligators eyeballed us from underneath the nearby boardwalk. The birds seemed to favor the Kirby Storter Roadside Park, though, where a longer boardwalk led through a swamp laden with anhingas drying their wings in the trees.

The scenic Loop Road brought us past views of sawgrass prairies and cypress trees dripping with air plants. As we ventured deeper into the swamp, the road repeatedly passed over culverts designed to allow water to continue flowing south. Each of these was party central for the alligators, all seeming to thoroughly enjoy the pastime of staring at the humans—especially when the fishing poles came out and the boys started pulling up Oscar fish. Native to the tropics, these colorful fish are popular aquarium fish, but as some locals advised us, they are also good for dinner. 

Everglades National Park

Our home base for the next two nights was an adorable mother-in-law suite in Miami, known as Caliz’s La Casa Verde. Centrally located, the Airbnb was only a forty-five-minute drive past palm-tree-lined farmland to the Ernest F. Coe Visitor

Center in Everglades National Park. From here, we spent nearly the entire day traveling the thirty-five-mile road south to Flamingo, stopping at every trail along the way. If pressed to name a favorite, I’d lean toward the Mahogany Hammock Trail, a boardwalk through an island of trees in the middle of the Everglades’ sixty-mile-wide “sea of grass.”  Hardwood hammocks are a dense stand of trees growing on elevated land within the freshwater slough—the slow-moving, marshy rivers channeling water through the Everglades. The Mahogony Hammock Trail led us through a lush jungle of gumbo-limbo trees, air plants, and the United States’ largest living mahogany.

That’s not to say the other trails aren’t worth the stop, because each one featured unique qualities, such as the vulture playground at the Anhinga Trail, which starts at the Royal Palm Visitor Center. The Pinelands Trail cut a small loop through a pine and palmetto forest where striped tree snails rested on the sides of smooth bark. At the Pa-hay-okee Overlook, tourists lined up for family photos framed by an expansive sawgrass backdrop.

The road ended in Flamingo, where boaters stocked up at the marina store before sailing off into the Florida Bay. We ordered an early dinner at the food truck and ate overlooking the water. We were lucky to secure a sunset boat cruise last minute, which toured us around the countless mangrove keys just off the coast. Our captain was on the search for the American crocodile, as the Everglades is the only place in the world you can see both alligators and crocodiles co-existing in the wild. Although we didn’t catch any lounging in the mangrove keys, the resident marina crocodile was waiting for us upon our return. 

Driving back the lone road at night, the pitch-black darkness yielded a kaleidoscope of stars in the sky. It also brought out the spotlight-toting Burmese python hunters, trolling the road in search of the invasive snakes, which are more active at night. More than 100,000 pythons are believed to live in the Everglades, growing up to two hundred pounds and devouring native animals, without any predators to slow their growth. In 2017, the state started paying bounty hunters to eradicate the harmful reptiles from the Everglades. 

Key Biscayne’s Crandon Park

As every boat tour, kayak, and paddleboard was booked when we arrived in Biscayne National Park, we instead opted to spend our second day in Miami exploring nearby Key Biscayne. The swanky Village of Key Biscayne, including the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, occupies the center of the barrier island, while the two ends are pristine, undeveloped nature. The bridge from Miami landed us on the northern end of the island, near the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature and Visitor Center. After investigating the sea creatures housed in the hands-on nature center, we wandered the trails outside while Bryce gathered coconuts littered across the ground, remnants of what was once the largest coconut plantation in the country. 

The nature center is part of eight-hundred-acre Crandon Park, home to pristine beaches, an ancient fossil reef tidal pool, and an abandoned zoo overrun with peacocks, whooping cranes, crocodiles, and iguanas. Once exotic pets, the expanding wild iguana population is now more often considered pests. However, to those unaccustomed to their presence, the three- to five-feet-long, green reptiles are quite fascinating to track, and the boys spent half the morning chasing the lightning-fast lizards.

Key Biscayne’s Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park

The Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park dominates the island’s southern tip, its crown jewel the nearly two-hundred-year-old Cape Florida Lighthouse, the oldest structure in Miami-Dade County. Surrounded by palm trees and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, the stark white lighthouse offered a serene setting despite its eventful history of hurricanes, shipwrecks, and Seminole ambushes. We missed out on climbing the wooden stairs to the top, but took a multitude of photos from the ground before driving back to Miami and then on to Lakeland for our last leg of the trip. 

Legoland

I’m told no Florida vacation is complete without at least one visit to a theme park. Amazingly, our boys have never been to one since our vacations have all largely centered around national parks. We decided to ease ourselves into this mysterious new world by starting small with Legoland. As children, my brother and I would summer with our grandparents in Lake Wales, and I have fond memories of watching the pyramid-stacked water skiers at Cypress Gardens, Florida’s original theme park. The park closed in 2009, after three hurricanes and growing competition from Disney World, and was later sold and reopened as Legoland Florida Resort. 

I had planned ahead, downloading the app, bookmarking rides, and scouting out bathrooms and lunch options. The day was a whirlwind of shooting fireballs at villains in Ninjago land, driving Lego boats at the Boating School, and flying through a 4D movie on a couch. We, of course, set aside time for lots of Lego building, trading minifigures with staff, and watching the reinvented, Lego-themed water-skiing show. And tucked away in the park’s back corner, we discovered the original Cypress Gardens botanical gardens, including the overwhelmingly massive Banyan tree planted as a seedling in 1939.

We slept well that night, dreaming of our week’s adventures, before setting off early the next morning for our long drive home. It was just enough time to compile a list of all the places we missed and start planning our return trip. 

Disclaimer: This trip was hosted and partially funded by Discover Crystal River Florida, though the opinions of the writer are entirely her own and formed independently of this fact.