Was Blue Spring State Park a Dud for Manatee Viewing?

It wasn’t that long ago that Blue Spring State Park had hundreds of manatees swimming out of the river and up to the spring. It was when Florida had record cold (and snow!?). Immediately, I tried booking a campsite to coincide with my trip to Orlando for a Super Bowl weekend. Blue Spring SP is about an hour north of Orlando so it would be a perfect caboose to my weekend trip. Was I able to find a site, though? If you’ve ever tried to camp in a Florida State Park, you probably run into the same problems I have… availability! But the good news is I reserved a site for 3 days/2 nights, hoping to see these so-called manatees! I arrived on Monday, just two days ago. The weather is warm (not like the snow I mentioned before). Monday came and went, Tuesday is history. Today I’m packing up to head to north Florida but the question remains… did I see lots and lots of manatees!? I’ll post more details tomorrow (I have yet to pack up my camper so I don’t have much time to write at the moment) but I’ll leave you with this teaser: I saw a lot of wildlife. Some in the water. Some out of the water.

What I saw remains to be revealed so come on back tomorrow for a more in-depth review of the campsite experience!

-Out of the Wilderness

Nike is So Out of Touch in Super Bowl Commercial

I’m 46 years old. I can’t remember in my lifetime up to this point where any woman I know or have ever known in sports has been told they can’t be demanding, relentless, confident, challenging, dominant, emotional, a stand out, or incredible that Nike would even suggest this is relevant in 2025… that women have been told they can’t win. Check out the ad then scroll down for more…

Admittedly, I gave up on Nike over 10 years ago when they completely steamrolled over Florida State in the redesign of the university logo. Never have I been more angry at a brand or a school than that circumstance, where it finally dawned on me that FSU (and Nike) has one ultimate god: Money. It was heartbreaking and I was infuriated for a long, long time about it. But I got over it. Well, I’m getting over it. Not in a forgive and forget kind of way, more like a we are never, ever, ever getting back together kind of way. #TayTay

Nike debuted their “So Win.” commercial during Super Bowl LIX between the Chiefs and the Eagles. It’s the most out of touch I’ve ever seen the iconic brand and quite frankly, it’s a failure even though I’m sure everyone at Nike headquarters is patting themselves on the back. Meanwhile, there’s another brand that appears to actually care about fairness in sports. This ad is so much more relevant to American culture in 2025. Have you seen the XX-XY Athletics commercial called “Real Girls Rock”? Here it is…

Women of the sports world… you’re awesome! I hope you feel encouraged every day to get out there and be your best. Nike says to “put yourself first” and I guess in some sports that’s applicable. But this goes for women, men, boys, girls… don’t be that kind of selfish athlete. Remember that old adage, there’s no I in team? Be a good sport and you will be rewarded. Play fairly. Play hard. Win. Lose. Learn.

And wear a brand that isn’t Nike.

-Out of the Wilderness

Can we all agree to stop using the term “meet cute”?

I don’t know the reason it started recently and I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly irritated I get every time I hear this phrase. After a little bit of research, I found out it’s a film industry term dating back to the mid-1900s. In short, a “meet cute” is when two people meet in an untraditional way. For instance, they bump into each other and one of them spills all their things and the other one bends down to help pick up, they make eye contact and go on to start a relationship. They meet in a cute way.

That’s fine. Whatever. There are plenty of terms in specific industries that haven’t become part of social culture. This needs to be one of those. But why has it been popping up in society in the last couple of years? It’s even part of a dating app now… which is pretty much the opposite of a meet cute.

If you’re getting in the habit of saying “meet cute,” please stop. It’s not funny. It’s not endearing. It’s not cute. It’s very, very annoying.

-Out of the Wilderness

I watched Trap starring Josh Hartnett… but is there a twist!?

Trap is a movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan so you might be wondering if it has a big twist as a lot of his movies do. Well, spoiler alert: This is me not telling you that it definitely does. Or does it? What is a twist anyway? Is it something you can do (Chubby Checker reference there for good measure)? Now that song is stuck in your head, isn’t it? See how I’m gradually changing the subject so you have no idea if there’s a twist or not because you forgot all about all the twists in M. Night Shyamalan movies. In a nutshell: This one is worth watching. Two things fascinated me the most:

  1. Josh Hartnett was incredible in this movie. The way they shot the film was pretty great too, lots of close ups so you could see Josh acting with just his facial expressions. If the idea was for the viewer to feel the awkwardness of many of the scenes, it’s an A+. Since we’re talking about acting, the entire cast was great but the other stand out was the actress playing the daughter. Her name is Ariel Donoghue. Just incredible the way she came off as a normal teen over the moon about a music star (the music super star was played by Saleka Night– M. Night’s real-life daughter by the way, who also did an outstanding job). Saleka’s role leads to the second most impressive part of the movie…
  2. The plot of the movie revolves around Josh Hartnett and his daughter attending the concert of a super star (Think: Taylor Swift level). You’d think the actual concert would be kind of an afterthought since the movie is about Josh’s character but you’d be wrong! Just producing a stadium concert had to be a whole separate entity from the movie. Can you imagine trying to wrangle that many extras? It was pretty amazing with the original songs and how the audience (of mostly teen girls) sang along with Lady Raven, as any teen in real life would do at a concert like that. Very believable, and incredible to have all of that come off so realistically. As a comparison, it was nothing like the performance of Zack Attack, no offense Zack, which made it onto a Casey Kasem show? Come on.

Bravo to the entire cast and crew. M. Night Shyamalan’s best two movies will always be The Sixth Sense and The Village but this one, while different than those blockbuster movies, was very good, too. Maybe you can rent it one day from Redbox, which I thought was completely out of business until I saw one today somewhere near Ocala, Florida. Who saw that twist coming!????

-Out of the Wilderness