Our arrival in Inverness, Florida on November 26th was kind of a blur. Although I was starting to recover from my COVID experience, the drive still wore me out. I spent several days just taking it easy around the house. I hadn’t paid much attention to Holder Mine Campground when we arrived but did get to see a little more of it as the week went on. We did have an enormous campsite that Harley enjoyed very much and, as I started to feel better, I would spend time sitting outside with her.
The campground was busy on the weekend but quiet through the week. We had to use the shower house as we were lacking sewer hookup and the dump station wasn’t super conveniently located. The showers were….okay. They had good temperature and pressure but weren’t very clean. I did find a snail in the stall with me one morning, however. Bonus nature!
On Friday, I had been quarantined for 9 days and was losing my mind from boredom. John took the day off and we drove over to Homosassa Springs State Park to see my friend Sue. Sue had been one of the volunteer coordinators at the Columbus Zoo back in Ohio when I was there and had since retired and moved to Florida. She now spent her time volunteering at Homosassa Springs. I had seen several beautiful photos that she had posted online and decided I had to see this park.
We arrived in time to meet up with my friend, Sue, and walk around with her for a few minutes. We watched her give a presentation about manatees and the park and then accompanied her to the part of the park where they house the manatees that are currently in their care for medical issues where she continued speaking with guests while tossing lettuce to the hungry residents.
The weather was a little chilly but that made it perfect for manatee viewing! Usually, the manatees lived in the Gulf but when the temperatures would drop, the water in the Gulf would become too cold and the manatees would flock to many of the parks along the coast to the warm waters of the springs which were a constant 72 degrees. We saw so many manatees!
The park also had a collection of native animals that were now housed there due to various illnesses or injuries that made them unable to survive in the wild. They also had Lou the hippo who had belonged to a zoo once but was so beloved by the area residents that they park kept him, despite the fact that hippos are not native to the United States. He was a very handsome fellow and definitely made an impression.
That weekend, we also visited Weeki Wachee Springs State Park to see the mermaid show! Ever since I was little, I have been obsessed with mermaids and would pretend to be one in my parents swimming pool as often as I could get away with it. I would constantly monitor the temperature until it reached a temperature that my mom deemed acceptable for swimming and I would stay in the water until someone (my parents or our poor babysitter, Sherrie) would decide they had had enough of my teeth chattering and would physically drag me from pool while I insisted through blue lips that I wasn’t cold.
The mermaids were absolutely spectacular! Thanks to long wand-like contraptions that the mermaids could take a breath of air off of, they were able to stay underwater for the entire show – no surfacing to breathe! They performed several musical numbers and mouthed along the words to the music as it played over the speakers in the underwater theater. The costumes were beautiful and the I watched them perform with a huge smile on my face and my eyes sparkling with childlike joy.
We also sat through one of the ranger talks where we were introduced to several native species.
Included in the price of admission to the park was a really peaceful boat ride through the park. We didn’t see much wildlife on the boat but the scenery was lovely and I never pass up the opportunity to ride on a boat.
Our final stop in Weeki Wachee was at a strip mall, of all places. One of the difficulties of being on the road is getting mail. We don’t really get much in the way of paper mail but we still needed a mailing address when we sold our house and hit the road. John found us a company that would receive our mail and scan it for us and we set that up as our new address. Most of the time we would tell them to trash whatever they received for us but in the rare occassion that they weould get something we needed, they would forward it on to any address of our choosing. The company has offices all over the country and John could have chosen pretty much anywhere to base our “residence”.
Instead, he made the mistake of letting me pick and I chose Weeki Wachee – because, of course, I am a mermaid at heart. While we were in town, we took a minute and stopped by and actually retrieved the mail from our box in person. It was kind of neat to see our “home” after all that time.
Unfortunately, the adventures of the weekend were just small distractions from the worry growing in my heart. One of our cats, Mama Kitty, hadn’t been acting quite right for the past week and over the weekend she pretty much stopped eating. By the time we could call a vet on Monday morning, I had pretty much accepted that this trip to the vet would be her last. We found a clinic that squeezed us in and John took a few hours off work to take us.
The entire staff was so sweet but, unfortunately, there was nothing they could do aside from confirming my worst fears (cancer) and supporting us through saying goodbye as Mama went to sleep one last time in my arms. John drove me back home and did his best to comfort me while I dissolved into a puddle of tears. I spent the next few days alternating between catatonic zombie and gushing snot fountain. I love all of my animals but Mama Kitty and I had a special bond – were were soulmates. She helped me heal after the loss of our daughter. She “nursed” me through knee surgery and countless illnesses. She went to work with me every day at the book store that we used to own. Just when we thought we had her figured out, she decided to be a foster mom to the last litter of kittens we raised in 2020 – the litter that included Boots Junior and Pallas who found their forever homes with us. She bossed me around constantly and I am pretty sure she passed much of her time plotting my demise. I loved her deeply.
Mama had been diagnosed as FIV+ back in 2012- just a few weeks after we had agreed to take her in “just for the winter” to help her recover from terrible sores and missing fur all over her body. The vet told us we would be lucky to have 5 good years. We had 11. While it still hurt like hell, at least I had no doubts. No regrets. No second guessing. I knew I had saved her life and given her 11 years that she definitely would not have had if we had not brought her into our home. I had 11 magical years with my furry best friend. There is no situation where 11 years was enough but it was 6 more years than I was supposed to have so I couldn’t be too hard on myself or too mad at the universe. The vet’s office expedited the cremation so we could have her back before moving on to our next spot and we picked up her ashes a few days later.
After a few days, John decided I needed to get out and get my mind off of things so he took another vacation day and took me to Silver Springs State Park for a ride in one of their glass bottom boats. The park was peaceful and gorgeous. Being on the water was exactly what I needed to sooth my soul. We learned that several movies had been filmed in the park over the last several decades and, with the gorgeous scenery and the crystal clear waters, I could see why it was chosen as the backdrop for many tropical-themed films.
We saw a variety of birds and other wildlife but the most amazing moment is when some manatees passed beneath our boat. The guide cut the engine and let the boat float there so we could watch them through the glass bottom. We also got to see the remains of an old Native American canoe and a few statues that had been put in the water for a movie that was shot there and left behind when filming wrapped. Water really does have healing magic.
The following day, we left Holder Mine and made the trek to our next park – Newport Campground just south of Tallahassee.
This was a rough post. Let’s end with some more photos of us having a blast at Weeki Wachee:
