Sea to Sea in Canada: A Welcome Escape from Winter

At a building entrance in Florida.

Have you ever felt like you needed a "vacation" from your vacation? That is the way I felt after we went on a two-week vacation to Florida. Although it was nice to get away from the cold, wind and snow of a typical Canadian winter, we were busy, busy each and every day of our vacation. We travelled down to Buffalo, New York to catch a budget flight through Frontier airlines. The flight itself was surprisingly good and uneventful. We brought food to eat on the flight and we drank water. The flight attendants were friendly and accommodating. The cost was under $300 US for two round trip tickets (that also included luggage fees). That's what a healthy amount of competition in a market does for consumers.

We had a wonderful time exploring several areas of Florida. The temperatures were on the cool side for the local residents but as Canadians, we thought it was just splendid after leaving minus 6-10 degrees Celsius.

We spent several days at the winter home of Sonny and Eleanor, Al's sister, in Cape Coral, which is near Fort Myers, then several days in a hotel depending on where we were exploring and also a week in Naples where we spent time with Paul and Toni, friends that we met in Prince Edward Island.

We saw lots of wildlife, explored the art deco buildings in South Beach, Miami and made it all the way down to Key West, the southernmost inhabited part of the mainland U.S. (technically, the Florida Keys are not "mainland" but these islands are all connected by bridges and causeways to the mainland).

We also had several new experiences on this trip - riding a Segway, seeing and touching alligators, going on an airboat ride through the Everglades and going to the famous South Beach in Miami.

Manatees are large marine mammals that are more closely related to elephants than to any other sea creatures. They are also known as "sea cows" because of their large stature and slow, lolling nature. The West Indian manatee, the species found in Florida, can move freely between salt water, fresh water and the brackish water of the estuaries in between.

Manatee Park is located near Fort Myers at a spot where the extra warm outflow from a power generating station enters a channel leading to the ocean. Manatees cannot tolerate cool or cold water, so during December to February, when Gulf waters are at their coolest, the warm outflow is very attractive.

Manatees are herbivores, so, like their "land cow" namesakes or their relatives, the elephants, they spend most of their time eating vegetation. Manatees don't have any real predators. Sharks or killer whales or alligators could eat them, but since they don't usually inhabit the same waters, this is pretty rare. Their biggest threat is from humans and because of this, all manatee species are endangered and threatened.