15 January - Day #44. A short distance from the Hontoon State Park is the Blue Springs State Park with its large manatee viewing area. A natural spring pours 1.1M gallons of crystal clear, 73F water into the St. Johns River. Manatees come to bask in the warm waters by the hundreds. We'd been told the park gets busy on the weekends. It being Friday we were ill prepared for the number of people visiting. School children crowded the viewing areas to look at the lazy mermaids napping on the bottom. It was a beautiful day and we decided to continue south along the St Johns river to Sanford--we had no plans to stay there but we felt it important to make the journey all the way to the end of the navigable river. We did an unceremonious U turn and started to retrace our steps north. The RR bridge 6 miles north had closed and did didn't look like they were opening anytime soon. We were told 10-15 minutes three times and after the first hour Dave contacted them and learned the bridge was broken. We waited another 2 hours and decided we should re-anchor in a small cove for the night. As we began to get the anchor settled, a call came over the radio indicating the bridge was repaired. We were grateful not to be spending the night in front of the RR bridge and restarted out trip north in the dark. It was an easy 2 hour trip back to the Hotoon Island State Park Marina. 34nm today and 974nm total. BJH
