Its rare that my wife Shellie has a Saturday morning off. She is usually working and that makes weekends difficult. This Saturday was a welcome day off and we decided to go paddling. She had heard my stories from last weekend about manatees swimming up to my feet as I wade fished in shallow water and it was too much to resist. I cautioned her that it was an 1 1/2 drive from our home in Orlando and we would need to leave at 5 AM to have a decent day but she was still up to it.
We arrived at 6:30 AM and paddled into a head wind. A little bird watching and fishing was soon followed by a manatee sighting. The one in the pic was fairly big and seemed like he was curious about my camo canoe. It would come up close enough to scratch his head and wouldn’t leave me alone until we paddled off at a fairly quick rate. We went out to the spot where I had manatees come up to my feet the week before and sure enough one came and visited Shellie. Soon after that a second huge one passed by seemingly following the path of the first one. A successful trip! We only stayed till around 11 AM when a the afternoon storms decided to arrive early and in force. Still a great day on the water.
