Don’t Ever Stop by Dunnellon Florida……..Ever!

Click pictures to enlarge

The only reason we stopped by this area of Florida is because our friends Dan and Jeanie own a house here and we wanted to see them. During the summer they live on their ranch in north central North Dakota where they run a waterfowl/upland bird hunting operation. We have a link to their place on the right hand banner of our blog page.

Speaking of our blog page, I know many of our readers receive our posts through the “follow by email” section. Although you get all the posts, you don’t see the information on our side banners such as; Our Favorite Blogs, Links to our Favorite Places, or a link to Our YouTube Videos. There is also a comment section at the bottom of each post where readers can comment. We love to hear from those who are reading our blog, sometimes we wonder if anyone is reading it! Here is a link to our actual blog and I will try to remember to add a link on each post.

As I was saying, the only reason we stopped by was to see Dan and Jeanie. They bought a house down here last year to escape the cold North Dakota weather. They absolutely love this area and are afraid if I blog about it everyone will come here and it will become overrun with RV’ers and tourists. So, with that I will start my post on why you should never stop by Dunnellon Florida…..ever!

The Rainbow Springs River is one of the main attractions in the area and we went kayaking on it a couple of times.  We had a horrible time and as you can see from the pictures and the video I made of this trip, the river is filthy, dirty water and you can hardly see into the water. The banks and littered with garbage and there are no fish in the river. Again……no reason to ever go here.

 

Video of our river trips

Mullet

Cool underwater scenery

This guy was sunning itself in the weeds

 

The next day was equally as bad. Barb and Jeanie went to the zoo and did not see any cool animals while Dan and I went fishing and I did not catch Redfish, Sheepshead and Ladyfish, three fish species that I have never caught before. The sheepshead here are not at all like the sheepshead we have up north. These sheepshead are actually a very sought after table fare and have really weird teeth. After fishing, Dan and I returned to the house to find that Barb and Jeanie had stopped by a seafood shop and picked up 5#’s of stone crab claws and a ½ a bushel of Oysters. We shucked about ½ of the oysters flavored them and grilled them. The other ½ we cooked whole on the grill until they opened. The stone crab were boiled and eaten with drawn butter. It was a gluttony of seafood and the meal was horrible. Again, no reason to come here for the fresh seafood markets.

Some of the pictures from the zoo visit

Redfish

Ladyfish

Look how weird the teeth are on Sheepshead

One of the main things we wanted to do here was see the Manatees! Barb had been obsessed with manatees for years ever since we have been planning our fulltime life. She even has a cute little manatee dance that she does when she talks about them. I wanted to videotape it but she would not let me. Manatees are related to the elephant. Adults can weigh as much as 1,800#’s, live 60 year years old and be over 12 feet long! The babies are 3-4 feet long and weigh up to 70#’s at birth.  So how did our manatee adventure go? There are no manatees here at all, you cannot swim with them and we did not see any at all! Below is a short video of us not seeing any manatees at all.  There is certainly no reason to come here to see manatees.

 Video of our trip

This guy was my buddy

 

An Osprey we saw along the way

We got some fishing in on our Manatee adventure too. Jeanie was a little cold!

On our last night here we went out to dinner and a bar with a live band. The food sucked and music sucked making for a horrible evening. We did not have a good time drinking, eating and enjoying the good company. There is no reason to come here for the food and entertainment.

Here's the 4 of us having a horrible time

The Rainbow Springs State Park is very nice and clean. There are a number of nice sites for big rigs. We had site #20 but #'s 7,8,9,10, 18, 19 21 & 22 were also very nice.

On a serious note, last week a reader and frequent commenter said that it looks like we are on our honeymoon. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true. This week Barb and I celebrated our 29^th wedding anniversary and I can honestly say that our love for has continued to grow throughout the years. In some ways I feel like this is the first anniversary of our new life. I can only imagine what the next 29+ years will bring!

Postscript to Dan and Jeanie (no one else should read further)…….True to my word I did not write one positive thing about Dunnellon.  I think I successfully portrayed your area in a manner that no one will want to come there. You live in one of the most beautiful areas we have seen. There is so much to do that we only hit a portion of it.Thanks for the great time and we will definitely be back!