I've read some blogs that document glamorous lives. Blogs about traveling with children and looking stylish. That's not us. Somehow/somewhere in the planning I heard that we should wear sweatpants, that that would be our best traveling option, knowing that we would be falling into bed late (didn't know quite how late), and then (and this is totally gross) getting up and wearing those clothes to Crystal River where we would change into our swimsuits and wetsuits before heading out to find some manatees. The problem (or bit of redemption) is that we don't really own sweatpants. The kids both have random pairs that are floods and I have these crazy fleece-lined parachute pants-things. Anyway, after a refreshing not-quite three-hour nap we all "got ready" -- meaning we stood up. I put back on my cardigan that I had baptized with Subway sweet teriyaki sauce. We headed to Crystal River. On the way there we realized that we might not make it on time. There might have been an incident with a really nice-yet-stern, fair, insightful, potentially life-saving police officer.
Inside the office for the manatee tours it was bedlam. It was probably helpful that we were late and most on the tour had already changed, for based on the kooky supply closet and decrepit bathroom we were shunted to I guess they don't have a lot of dressing room options. When you're running on three hours of sleep it is pure joy to stand on a hygiene-compromised floor and try to shimmy yourself and two kids into still-damp wetsuits.
The ride out on the boat was pretty. The sheer amount of waterbirds -- let alone the variety -- was enough to get us all excited. We passed one of John Travolta's houses (like its surroundings, very pretty). The excitement did start to wane a) as we started to get increasingly colder (the captain said that it was an unseasonably chilly day) and b) as the captain started explaining where he was going to anchor. My personal vacation planner had sold the experience as standing in the water waste-high while manatees came up to you and snuggled. Now that we were squeezed into bacteria-forests and half way down the river it was starting to sound more like "up to 35 feet drop offs" and "the water is murky and choppy today, so hopefully you'll see something." By the time we anchored I had mentally stripped my kids of any swimming skills they have (they are pretty proficient -- in a pool) and visualized them sinking like stones 35 feet under and then being eaten by the only non-vegetarian mutant manatee. After everybody else was in the water, I still stood on the deck with a kid's hand in each of mine and wished fervently that they could just be satisfied with how well we could see them from the boat.
That first moment in the open water as you prepare to push away from a boat is surreal. To have the water level and the horizon at eye level at the same time your body is in sensory shock is just on this side of too much. I worried for a moment that I was going to have some kind of panic attack, but then realized I needed to suck it up for my kids (The Boy kept flashing me the thumbs-up). As I started paddling about I felt a slight surge of humiliation as I considered that my last pre-heart-attack and/or pre-drowning thought might be that mantra of Ellen's Dori-fish: just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
We got to a nice rock ledge that made it shallow enough to assuage most of my drowning fears and we hung out. The rules are that you can't pursue the manatee. If one approaches you you are allowed to touch it with one hand only. There are ropes with buoys that provide sanctuaries -- people are not allowed to pass. As we stood/floated/shivered by one of the ropes The Girl was within a foot of a resting manatee for a good 10-15 minutes. She could barely make out his tail under water with her mask (the water was murky and her mask kept fogging up). When his shnuffler came out of the water a couple of feet from us it was exciting. We could see them all around us rolling and turning. We were told to stand still and their curiosity would often draw them. Just as our patience was about to pay off and one was moving towards us THE MOST obnoxious family materialized from who-knows-where. "Here comes one now!" And instead of waiting for him, they pushed back the marker rope and started groping our manatee. Within moments he determined the family was as awful as we had and he turned and went elsewhere. A super nice couple -- all tripped out in fully professional gear (not like the rented beauties we had -- every time I raised my arms more water would flood in and rain down on the inside) -- saw the entire exchange and offered to email me some of the pictures that they had taken of a couple of manatees with their space-agey water cameras. That was some consolation. After an hour and some change our captain signaled for us to swim back out to the boat. The Sister, The Girl, and I dutifully headed back. While doing so everybody with their masks in the water told us that a small one went right under us. Oh how I wish that The Girl had seen it or felt it! Her tactile disappointment smoldered hotter when The Boy returned with The Dad and reported that "they feel squishy." We were already too far away to call back when they had one approach them. Sigh.
Back on the boat people complained not that there weren't enough manatees, but that there were so many, yet couldn't be seen because the visibility was so bad. The nice couple took pity on my shivering kids and gave us their towels to wrap them in for the return trip (we had been told to bring nothing). The Girl had a huge snotty/booger issue that I had to rectify by wiping with my hand then transferring the goods to my water shoe. There's no end to our type of glamour. After the peeling and prying of the wetsuits, and the comedy of errors in the nasty bathroom trying to get clothes on clammy bodies, I tried to upgrade for the day from the parachute pants to a casual dress… but the belt fell in the toilet so I had to again don the sauced-up cardigan.
In the car with the heater on, we waited for the kids' lips to become a less-intense shade of blue and talked about the parts that were insanely cool about the experience. I think that our biggest take-away was conquering those waves of panic while getting into deep open water, letting go of the ladder, and forcing ourselves to move further and further away from the boat. Obviously The Boy was stoked about touching the fellow. The Girl liked to know that by all reports the manatee that went under her on our way to the boat was a small one (all baby animals are worth more points), and she spotted a Bald Eagle.
At some point in the car an errant melted chocolate chip from the trail mix rubbed its dirty face and hands all over my cardigan and dress.
On to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. Straight in from the gates we hit the River Theater for the animal show. The delivery by two young lads was endearing and we learned quite a bit about animals indigenous to Florida. Apparently that run-zig-zag-if-an-analligator-is-pursuing-you-hint is worthless. They have no problem going zig-zag, can run up to 30 mph, and can jump 6-feet high. I liked the educator's point: you're probably not going to win that one, so instead do your best to not be in a situation that inspires an alligator to pursue (i.e. giving food, getting too close, startling a baby gator, etc.). Sometimes the best strategy/way to avoid being a victim is actually a few steps back in the decision-making process. We learned a really neat term: keystone species. "A species that impacts an ecological system in a way that far exceeds what would be expected based on its biomass." I want our family to be a keynote species. In a good way. After the show the kids got to touch Elvis the King Snake and Armando the baby alligator.
Our next event was taking the river tour. The water is from the spring and it is 99.9 percent clear. And in some places a sort of aqua color. The clarity and shallowness made it satisfying, for it enabled us to see many large and beautiful fish. Apparently there is the nice variety of species because the salt water fish have no problem coming in to the non-salt spring-fed part of the river.
After disembarking we headed to the Underwater Theater to see the main reason we came -- the mermaids. I cannot express how happy this made me. Good kitsch actually makes me teary. Here is why (in no particular order):
1. It reminds me of my heritage. As a kid when we visited my maternal grandparents' house I woke up in a bedroom with an enormous replica of The Blue Boy looking down at me. I wasn't born -- my kitch-loving self sprang fully formed from the head of a dashboard hula dancer.
2. It's cool. The stores and museums that draw me have always been the collections of random, the assortments of oddities. In part because there's a slight (though this is somewhat compromised by the hipsters) feeling of it being unique -- requiring the view to relying on his/her own aesthetics, history, taste, sense of humor to determine what is awesome.
3. It brazenly represents "extra." The luxuries of living in developed countries is that once survival is no longer the critical question of the day, you move into a different realm: can I get money to buy food by selling salt and pepper shakers that look like Paul Bunyan and Babe? If I turn my backyard into a miniature wonderland and sell tickets can I get enough money to buy my own Paul Bunyan salt and pepper shakers? If I put my kids in costumes and have them stand on the corner to lure in more costumers can I get a gold-gilded Paul Bunyan and Babe salt and pepper set?
In short, why I hope our kids learn to appreciate kitsch: our family heritage, appreciation of the one-off, and the realization that it is spawned by equal parts quirkiness and the lure of "the American Dream" (a point that made redundant the "Proud to be an American" number at the end when the Mermaids lost their tails and contorted around in front of an American flag). Somebody with vision -- who has a clear sense of how vintage retro appeals to a new generation of hipster families (Instagram, black rimmed glasses, saddle shoes) -- could take that Mermaid gig to a whole new level. I went into the gift shop expecting there to be all sorts of that 50's/60's nostalgia that's popular, and was sadly disappointed to find plastic water bottles and baseball caps and really cheesy pictures of the current mermaids. No books, no nothing that referenced its heyday. They do have the peacocks going for them -- dozens of males and females wandering about. And they have those wax mold keepsakes that I love.
There was an opportunity to get your picture taken with a mermaid. While I'm not sad about our decision to not take advantage of the opportunity, I do feel badly for our gnome… I might have been able to persuade the mermaid to tuck him into her clamshells -- which would have made for award-winning photography.
With nacho cheese AND honey mustard generously smeared on my cardigan due to some carrying/hustling (being trash is kind of a slippery slide… once you wear sweatpants it's kind of hard to regain traction…) we headed outward and onward to Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Clearwater, FL.
We had been told that it was a tourist destination dedicated to the movie Dolphin Tale. I guess that's right, but that's not bad. When you consider that it's an actual animal rescue facility, I think it's nice (and obviously necessary for financial reasons) to allow the public to come and take a gander. And what you get to gander at is really cool. And it's fun to see where the scenes from the movie were shot (it's always a shock to see how camera angles can make spaces seem bigger -- just go and look at an apartment that was advertised in the NYTimes for another good example of this). We looked at otters that had been found damaged and by dumpsters, gimpy nurse sharks and rays, dolphins that had beached themselves and suffered from severe sunburn, sea turtles with missing limbs, and the pelicans that played Rufus in the movie (an aside: on our way to the aquarium we got to talking about Desi Arnaz because The Dad and I had once heard a program about him on NPR that was fascinating. He was a driven man. Like the rest of America, I wish that he had avoided alcohol and stayed faithful to Lucy, but that aside, he made a lot of interesting decisions -- some that showed great insight, sensitivity, and integrity. He had been born into a family of wealth and luxury, and then when the Cuban government changed his family was lucky to get to America intact -- penniless -- but intact. Then he worked his guts out to achieve what he did. Not only did I Love Lucy pioneer many things in the world of TV production, but it also championed the right to show a bi-racial married couple and a pregnant woman on TV. I read these things out loud to the kids -- not sure if anything is sticking?). Anywhoooooo, the two pelicans that played Rufus were named Ricky and Lucy and both have different skills/talents. It's together that they are able to accomplish the job. I like that. Especially on trips where my sense of safety, desire to reflect, and appreciation of all that's quirky balances out The Dad's sense of adventure, determination, and appreciation for ALL that's in Fodor's.
The programs that they had were great (the kids got to participate in a rescue, and we saw Panama and Winter do a little dolphin magic). They also had a lot of staff/volunteers -- which made everything seem approachable. I asked one volunteer how much the percentage of visitors had increased since the movie. She laughed and said: "100%?" Which makes sense why it's so movie-centric -- that is after all why the people have come. She said that before a "good" day would be 5 visitors, now they have hundreds, sometimes even thousands a day. We chatted about how that is providing the opportunity to do more rescues. They built the additional museum (Winter's Dolphin Tale Adventure) on the mainland that is all about the movie (included in your price of admission), and all of this crazy-new revenue is enabling them to build a new building with dozens of turtle rescue pools and two large-animal rescue tanks. Chatting with The Sister I articulated this cycle: somebody hears an inspirational story and writes a book, somebody decides to make a movie and use the actual run-down rescue center in the movie, Americans throw their money at the movie and then decide to throw it at the aquarium, the aquarium now has the funds to do more rescuing, and hopefully do more inspirational work.
We stopped by the Winter's Dolphin Tale Adventure and the kids enjoyed the hurricane alley and another touch tank. I learned about HD -- I don't like how it looks. The crispness unsettles me (yes, I'll go eat my prunes and massage my bunions).
Last stop of the day was the Columbia restaurant. On the way there The Boy started sining: "I like to dance the fffffllllllAAAAAAA-minnnnnngoooo even though I learned it in Spain." It got us squarely into the wanting-to-be-entertained mood.
The food was very, very good and while I'm not an expert on flamenco dancing, all the stomping and clicking and cane pounding was exciting and provided spunky ambiance. On our way out we saw that the jar holding the chocolate-coated butter mints was unmanned. We filled our pockets.
Glamorous travelers we are not. However, when we walked out into the spring-like night with our bellies full and The Boy humming flamenco music we all agreed that we would do the day again. Our gnome, having missed the clamshell opportunity might feel differently.
