I remember how excited I was as I sat at the airport waiting for my friend Kelli to arrive. She was coming down from Denver to spend her last weekend of her winter break with me. I wanted to show her "the real" and natural Florida. We had reservations to get our first scuba lessons (ever) in the beautiful Crystal River. The river actually has a natural spring flowing through it. The biggist attraction of the river and the main reason for our choice in picking Crystal River to dive at is the manatees. In Crystal River people could actually swim with the manatees.

After Kelli arrived at Tampa International we headed straight to Crystal River. We headed north for two hours and when we got there we noticed the town was very small. One of our few choices to eat was a Denny's. This was actually the town's hot spot. We were supposed to be on the dock of the river at 6:00 a.m. so we decided to head to our hotel to get some rest after we ate.

When we got to the dock, a short time before 6:00, we were struck by how cold it was. It was early January and there must have been a cold front passing through. We stood on the wet dock next to the river half dressed in our swim suits. Nevertheless, we were stoked, our group was racing to get into the boat and could not waite to begin our adventor.

When we got into the cold murky water we swam around and got the hang on scuba diving. It was fun to see how parts of the river were very murky and how clear the water is where the spring water flowed. While swimming alongside Kelli I bumped into a manatee. I did not see the manatee and did not know it was a manatee until I looked up and saw it looking at me. It seemed to be more freightened then I was. The manatee was quite big, it looked as if it might have weighed 1000 pounds. I grabbed my under water camera and took pictures of the manatee. Kelli swam up and pet it and it seemed very nice. In fact our scuba instructor informed us that manatees are one of the kindest animals.

As the large manatee swam away from us, Kelli and I noticed that our group was moving on as well. We got into our boat and headed toward the clear waters. We were indeed lucky to find a family of manatees. There were two big manatess and one baby manatee. We got out of our boat and joined the manatees in the water. The baby manatee was very friendly, it came up to us and swam in between us. This was the most enjoyable portion of our great trip.

Kelli and I left Crystal River with awesome memories that we will forget. We later went back to my house and hung out until it was time for her to head back to Denver. We learned how to scuba dive and swam with manatees. It is safe to say that this was one of the best trips we had ever been on.