See a mermaid, swim like a mermaid

Day 198
​Orange City- FL

A morning stroll takes us to the water again. Eli seems to keep wanting to head down this way. His hunches paid off, and a manatee was his reward.

While he stood there quivering and whining I walked over to the other side of the dock to take a look around. Today turned into a great day to finally see some sea mermaids at a close distance. We stood at the dock for what must have been 20 minutes watching the group mingle around in a circle. Then they dispersed, and so did we.

We decided to stay in the park today and soak up the local culture. This first magnitude spring spews out an amazing 102 million gallons of water per day at a constant 72 degrees. Wrap your noodle around the numbers: 4,250,000 gallons per hour, 70,833 gallons per minute, 1,180 gallons per second. In case your not brushed up on your gallon milk jugs I'll give one more example. That's 155 Olympic size swimming pools per day. No wonder the manatees swim here. Now we are going to see what it's like. Oh...  that's right.

After our swim we headed back to the RV with the shivers. Katie and I laid out in the sun to warm back up. I woke up from a sun nap feeling exhausted, even a little unwell. We left for the last walk of the day and took in some water views of the St. Johns River. Life on the road, could be worse.