Best Western Free Night for 10,000 Points Promo

Best Western is again offering a promo where any hotel redemption is 10,000 points.  We were able to use this promotion last year for a stay in Crystal River at the last minute.  This year the promotion is a little different, it is only valid for stays Sunday through Thursday.

Get a FREE Night for only 10,000 Points!

Best Western Rewards^® members enjoy your exclusive offer. Best Western Members can redeem 10,000 points (or less) for a FREE night. Redemption offer runs between November 15, 2018 and January 15, 2019. The discounted FREE night offer is valid for stays at Best Western branded hotels in the U.S. or Canada, Sunday through Thursday only. Registration not required. Exclusions apply*.

More information can be found on their website here:West Western Promotion

 

Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River

After a change of plans to include manatees on this Florida trip we had some free time on Saturday in Crystal River. We had our amazing swim in the morning, and a little warm up time in the hotel hot tub afterwards.  I had heard that Three Sisters Springs was the place to see manatee so we drove five minutes up the road to the address online.

Parking is available at City Hall.  We had just missed the shuttle and had an almost 20 minute wait.  This gave us time to sit in the sunshine and to grab sweatshirts from the car.

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Three Sisters Springs

A post shared by Stretchingittotravel (@stretchingittotravel) on Jan 18, 2018 at 6:44pm PST

The Crab Plant Restaurant

We have found the restaurants on the Gulf side of Florida to be unusually busy early in the evening.  Where we are from( and most of the places we travel to) if you want to eat at a particular restaurant you can show up at 5:30 and have no issue.  It is a little early for our family to eat dinner but it is usually our vacation plan to have no wait.

Except for on this trip. After running into jam packed restaurants at 5:30 we started to look as we drove around.  Some parking lots were plenty full at 3:30pm.  Back home that is happy hour times for a beer, not a full meal.  We needed to eat even earlier then!

Knowing we wanted to eat at the Crab Plant on a Friday we made sure we arrived horribly early.  The restaurant was really easy to find and maybe five minutes from the Best Western in Crystal River.

We took the last open parking spot and then open table at 5:10pm.  So early!  Families arrived after us and started queuing up for the next open tables.  By 5:45 people would enter, see the wait and leave.  This is not normal so early in the Midwest, oy!

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The Crab Plant

A post shared by Stretchingittotravel (@stretchingittotravel) on Jan 2, 2018 at 5:14pm PST