Weeki Wachee Springs

Last night, we ate at Harold Seltzer's Steakhouse.  It's a chain of steakhouses in the Tampa Bay area that a man from Montreal started.  His grandfather, father and uncle were butchers in Montreal and the restaurant is named in honor of his grandfather.  Doug had a rib eye and I had a filet.  It was one of the best steak dinners I've ever had.  The interior of the restaurant is warm wood, there are giant paintings of old Florida postcards on the walls and the background music was classic Rat Pack.  It was a great experience and I would highly recommend this restaurant if you're in the area.

Instead of going to the beach today (it was so crowded yesterday being the weekend), we went to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park.

The spring is so deep that the bottom has never been found.  The first underwater show took place on October 13, 1947.  Weeki Wachee's heydays were in the late 50's and early 60's.  Elvis even visited there.

These are the original 1947 mermaids:

Today, we saw part of the Little Mermaid show:

And we saw part of the former mermaids show:

They also have a river boat ride:

We saw fish, an alligator, an eagle, and 2 Great Blue Herons:

It was an interesting place to go and we really enjoyed ourselves.  It's amazing to think that 117 million gallons of water bubble up from that spring every day!  We love road side tourist stops.  We're the ones that stopped at the Hormel Spam Museum when we were driving through Minnesota.  We're the ones who will turn around if we drive past an old gas station.  I need to look up where that giant ball of string is located so that we can stop there sometime.

A local artist who was there  recommended a place for lunch  and so off we went to find it.  Sam's Beach Bar was at Hudson Beach.  We had to keep circling the parking lots to find a space.  We left at one point thinking we'd never get a spot.  We decided to try one more time and presto, we found a parking spot.  We had peel and eat shrimp and sweet tea.  Sweet tea is one of my favorite things about the south and particularly in Florida.  A band was playing and the service was great.

The shrimp were so good, we decided to have them for dinner, too.  Off to Publix for some shrimp, crackers and chocolate eclairs.  I've eaten the shrimp so now it's time for an eclair and a cup of coffee.