Weeki Wachee Springs
During March, 2006, Steve had to do his last collecting trip for one of his grants. This required a trip to Florida to collect soil to rear the clam shrimp back at U Akron. We decided to take the whole family and made it a “working holiday”! WE drove down and Steve collected as we drove from place to place. We visited Steve and Claudia's old buddies from Rutgers, Lynn and Joe Quattro and their family in Columbia, S.C. The trip in FL was split between Weeki Wachee Springs (current page) and Clearwater, FL (see this page). Claudia is totally into mermaids, so she found out about Weeki Wachee Springs which has a mermaid park where they have several mermaid "plays" each day in a crystal clear spring. It turned out to be a really fun place to visit!
Here is the entrance to Weeki Wachee springs. Clearly, the girls are pretty excited about the visit!
One of the first things we saw when we got into the park was a family of manatees! The crystal clear waters made it very easy to see them, plus they came right up to the edge in their playful jaunts!
Not to be outdone by the mermaids, the manatee family got into the spirit of things and came over to see what was going on! Being the nerd that Steve is, he probably took more shots of the manatees than the mermaids!
The Wikki Wachee mermaids did several performances per day. We saw 2. They have an underground auditorium with big plexiglass windows into a crystal clear spring where the mermaids swim their performances. It was pretty fun!
Right after the mermaid "photo shoot" the manatees moved back in and we got this shot of them behind Sophie (Sophie - LOOK AT THE CAMERA!)
At the end of the performances, the mermaids are CARRIED out (apparently, fins aren't so good for walking on land!) to meet their fans and to get pictures taken with them. Here are Sophie and Sarah getting a shot with a mermaid!
There was also a cool boat trip one could take up the river that was feed by the Weeki Wachee spring. We saw all kinds of birds and a freshwater otter, which was totally cool!
There was also a "transformative" portion of the experience where the kids were transformed into mer-people. Sophie is marveling at her new found chest hair!