Welcome to Florida!
My sister and I decided to take a quick trip to Hudson, Florida last month. Our thought process centered around going scalloping so we looked up all the info we needed and settled on heading to Hudson, Florida. It’s about an hour south of Crystal River on the Gulf Coast. We booked a place, registered for our fishing licenses, and packed our bags! From Savannah it’s about a 6 hour drive – without having to stop 20 times for Ada to use the bathroom LOL – on the way down we stopped at my FAVORITE pizza place in Homosassa – you can read more about it in the blog I link at the bottom! 11 out of 10 stars!
Kayaking, scalloping, and almost seeing mermaids
For Saturday our plan was to get up early and visit Weeki Wachee State Park – a roadside attraction style park about 30 minutes north of where we were staying. There is a small water park situated on a natural spring and they host mermaid shows. The things we read said to get there early because once they sell out of tickets they are done selling for the day. The park opened at 9 so we pulled in around 8:30 and it was SLAMMED!! We didn’t bother getting out of the car just did a parking lot u-turn and headed back to the rental. Instead of seeing mermaids we spent the morning kayaking and hunting for scallops.
You may note there is not a photo of the scallops – that’s because we are not very good scallop hunters and we did not find any! We had a good time though and even saw a dolphin in the area we were swimming and kayaking.
We did have some luck with the crab trap our AirBnB offered on the dock! Saturday we caught 1 crab – it was yummy!
For dinner Saturday we rode right down the street from where we were staying and had a “let’s order several apps” dinner with some live music at Sam’s Beach Bar. Ada likes music so she was in her element!
We also stopped for the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten – cinnamon roll favor – but I don’t have a picture because a storm came up pretty quickly and we had to get back to the house quickly to pull the kayaks off the dock and put them away. If you’re ever in the area the ice cream place is called Hudson Beach Ice Cream Parlor – it’s worth checking out!
Weeki Wachee State Park
On Sunday, we decided to try the state park again thinking maybe if we got there a little earlier and with it being Sunday it wouldn’t be as busy. Wrong…but we got in line and waited anyway. We were in line at 8:10 – the park opened at 9:00 – we didn’t get inside the park until 10:20 – for real. You may or may not know this about me but there are few things I’ll stand in line for these days, apparently showing my kids mermaids is one…
The park has 2 water slides, a swimming hole, a lazy river, boat rides, mermaid shows, etc. Once we got in Christopher and I went right to the water slide, where we waited in line again for entirely too long, then we got tubes and did the lazy river. We decided not to try for the first mermaid show of the day – basically we didn’t want to stand in line again and we thought we would have a better chance later.
My overall thoughts on Weeki Wachee are this…don’t tell your kids, if you drive by around 10:30 am and the parking lot isn’t full stop in and check it out. It was not expensive at all, I think $13/adult and $8/kids over 5 although the tubes were another $9/person based on height (Christopher $9, Ada free). It was neat and the kids did enjoy it but it wasn’t really worth standing in line for so long. We definitely made the right choice skipping the 11:00 mermaid show and going to the 1:30 instead, we didn’t have to wait in line to get in but it did fill up so don’t push it close to start time if you want a seat.
Heading Home
After the mermaid show we hit the road to head back home – since we passed on the 11:00 mermaid show we were running a little behind the time we wanted to leave the area. We did have one more official stop to make on the way home – we needed some scallops! We stopped for a lunch/dinner in Crystal River at Seafood Sellar & Cafe – I talk more about this restaurant in the blog I’m linking below also. Shauna and I are creatures of habit so when we visit Homosassa we usually eat at the two places mentioned in this blog. We know what we like! I ordered blackened scallops and she ordered the catfish Louisanne, both were amazing!!
Looking for other weekend trips from Savannah?
Check out these two other posts about weekend trips from Savannah. The first is the one I’ve mentioned in this post about Homosassa/Crystal River and the second is Cumberland Island!
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