Manatee Watching

On our last day in Florida, I took the girls to Apollo Beach to go Manatee watching. There's a power plant that has built a viewing area that's free to the public. After 5 days of Disney and beach spending, I was all about finding a free yet fun activity! This place was very impressive! They had a long walkway to the viewing area which is basically a small inlet right along the powerplant. I didn't understand exactly how the plant worked, but it creates warm waters along the plant from the production of electricity which the manatees like. When the ocean and bay areas get colder in the fall & winter months, the manatees flock to this area and you can see them by the hundreds. We came only a week after they were open, so we only saw 15 or so, but they were still really cool!! At first I thought our trip was a bust because we didn't see any for about 15 minutes. Then we noticed the water ripple in places and slowly their backs & head would surface. Once we knew what to watch for, we noticed quite a bit. We also saw lots of sand sharks and sting rays. I enjoyed it so much I didn't want to leave, but it was hot and the kids were done looking at the slow moving manatees, so we headed over to their visitor's center.

Here's Sadie smelling Manatee breath. What does it smell like you ask? Very nice actually! They're herbivores, so it smells like plants.

We also tried out the hurricane simulator!

Here's the best picture I got of the manatees. You can see the reflection of the powerplant on the water.






This is what it looked like on the other side of the bridge. Very peaceful. I didn't take a picture of the power plant...it was just big and ugly!