Dawn on Friday, May 23

Yesterday, Eric realized that the blackwater tank needed to be fuller in order to get the suction going, so he added some water to the tank. In good news, it worked and he was able to pump out the blackwater tank, although he was concerned that it may not have fully emptied out. 

After morning chores and school, Eric and Keith went to the water park. It was empty, just as it had been on Wednesday. The park had a lot of rides. They went on almost all of them, and the longest wait was 2-minutes. They had a blast. We later found out that the local schools finish the year on Friday, so they were glad they didn’t wait to go. It’s probably crowded when school is out!

In the evening, Johnny and Joanne had us over for dinner again. They also invited another couple they’d been friends with for many years. Joanne made a great dinner and we had a lovely evening with them.

Today, it was rainy. After morning chores and school, we went to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center, which we were told was a turtle sanctuary. We took the road that ran along Singer Island north. While there were plenty of houses and small condo complexes, one hallmark of the island was what felt like a never-ending line of high-rise towers.

When we got there, we were surprised to find that it was actually a full turtle hospital, where hurt/sick turtles were sent for medical care, then released back into the wild upon recovery. They even have a turtle ambulance!

Like the Manatee Discovery Center, admission was free and donations were welcomed. There were a couple of indoor exhibit areas. In the indoor areas, there were fish tanks, some really cool art made out of recycled materials, and an interactive educational game.

The majority of the displays were outdoors. We were allowed to visit the displays that were under the covered walkways. While the indoor exhibits had general marine information, the outdoor displays under the walkway were focused on turtles. Per the signs, there were seven species of turtle in the world. Five swim in Florida waters, but only the Leatherback, Green and Loggerhead turtles lay eggs in Florida.

The displays had a lot of stats about each species, along with samples of bones and shells that could be touched.

All of the outdoor tanks were strictly prohibited to go near since there was lightning. We believe the round tanks each had turtles.

We could see that there were also some other aquariums near the turtle tanks, too.

Since the storm wasn’t going to end any time soon, we headed back to the boat once we’d seen everything that was open. It was another spectacular twilight.