Towns, Honeymoon Island, Manatees, and River Cruise

Monday & Tuesday, May 13 & 14, 2013--Northward along the West Florida Coast

We checked out of the hotel in Clearwater and headed up the coast with a list of places to explore on our way to Brooksville where we are staying for the next 3 nights.  We followed Highway 19 Alt, the coastal highway.  These were our stops on the first day:

Dunedin--We had driven through here once before, but we returned and saw more of the town including their baseball stadium where the Toronto Blue Jays play during their spring training.  We visited the downtown again, and went down to the port area.

Honeymoon Island--This is an island in the north side of Dunedin.  It has a very good reputation among fans of nice beaches, and it has an interesting history.  An early promoter built grass huts and invited people to sponsor honeymooners to come there for 1-2 weeks following their marriages (at a cost of $25 per week).  There are historical photos with accompanying texts.  The island is also great for seeing birds.  We took a hiking trail and saw osprey nests with birds in them, two owls in trees, and a nest with an American Bald Eagle in it. Unfortunately, in walking the VERY WHITE beach, we got sunburned!!

Tarpon Springs--This town was founded by Greeks who came here to fish for sponges.  Still, a large part of the population has Greek names.  The downtown has historical buildings, but it fails as a tourist destination.  There is little of interest to see or do there beyond the architecture.  The waterfront, is quite successful as a tourist destination, but it fails as a worthwhile one.  It is filled with souvenir shops and restaurants hoping to take advantage of tourists and little else.  I would not recommend this town as a tourist site to anyone.

New Port Richey has little to make it a destination, but it is nice for a quick ride through town before continuing up the highway.  The downtown has a nice theater and some cute buildings.  The riverside is quite interesting with homes, apartments, a nice park, and a restaurant or two.
___________
On Tuesday, we headed northeast of Brooksville.  Our first stop was the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site.  It's a place where they used to crush the sugar cane and make sugar.  There's not much to the site, but it was interesting.

Our main stop was the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park.  It's essentially a zoo dedicated to Florida species, but the main feature is the manatees that are there.  There are few places on land where manatees can be seen, and this is one.  They help rehabilitate injured manatees and release them back into the wild.  However, they also had a wide variety of animals--Florida black bears, red foxes, bald eagles, whooping cranes, roseate spoonbills, ospreys, white-tail deer, alligators, snakes, etc.  We spent 4 hours there seeing the animals and also attending three information shows about the animals.

The park also has a walking trail and a boat ride down a river.  Both connect the visitor's center to the park itself.  We parked the car at the park, so we walked up the trail to the center and then took the boat back to the parking lot.  The trip was down a narrow river with turtles and alligators along the side.  The river was lined with thick woods of various trees many of which had Spanish moss hanging from the limbs.

Returning to Brooksville, we stopped for a late afternoon matinee of Iron Man 3 in 3-D at the local theater.  Then we bought sandwiches and cookies at Sam's Club for dinner in our room.