Paddling in Silver Springs State Park

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Hi Blog!

Happy Valentines Day! To celebrate, we decided to do some heart healthy paddling. Today's destination was Silver Springs State Park. The 4,000-acre park encompasses not only Silver Springs, but the entire 5-mile Silver River and surrounding sandhill forest. 

We started our adventure at the park's canoe and kayak launch. Dozens of paddlers were lined up waiting for their rental kayaks. We made a quick launch and tried to put as much space between us and the crowd.

Instead of going straight to the spring, we decided to follow the Fort King Paddle Trail. This one mile trail was once part of a tourist river boat cruise. Today only paddlers are allowed.

We've had a chance to paddle several Florida springs. Looking down into the crystal clear water never gets old. The water color constantly changes from light blue to deep green. We can actual watch the anhinga and cormorants swim by as they fish for lunch.

While the ibis will eat fish, it goes more for crabs, crayfish, snakes, frogs and other creepy crawlies.

Silver Springs is one of the oldest tourist attractions in Florida. It was founded in 1852. The popularity of the springs increased even more as the glass bottom boat was invented in 1878. The park offered a Jungle Cruise boat ride. To make Florida more jungle like, the operator of the park put a small colony of rhesus monkeys on an island in the Silver River. The monkeys quickly escaped and settled all along the river. Their descendants are still living in the wild even today. There were lots of old buildings that were once part of the scenery along the jungle cruise.

We heard several tour guides mention there are over 400 monkeys living in the area, but didn't see any. We found this photo on the internet. 

While no monkeys were found. We did see several wood ducks. The wood ducks are some of the prettiest ducks we've seen.

We must have taken at least 20 pictures of various turtles. Rather than include 20 different turtle photos, here is one photo with 20 different turtles.

In the 1930s, Hollywood discovered Silver Springs and over the years, scenes from at least 20 movies were filmed here, including Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, Distant Drums starring Gary Cooper, the James Bond movie Moonraker, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and six Tarzan flicks.

Peek-a-boo! This Great White Heron tried to hide as we paddled by.

As we made our way down toward Silver River, we noticed a couple paddlers ahead of us pointing at something in the water. We soon saw a large ghostly shape coming toward us. We stilled our paddles and let the manatee pass by.

As we floated down the trail, others were coming up. They clued us in on where they spotted some alligators. Here is the biggest one we saw.

The Great Blue Heron is always fun to see. 

If you look carefully behind the branch you'll see a little baby gator.

We stopped to photograph his anhinga drying its wings.

Only after we took our photo of the anhinga did we notice this gator slowly making its way toward the unsuspecting bird.

We entered the much wider Silver River. It was time to begin our paddle upstream to the spring. We soon spotted a momma manatee and baby floating downstream.

Kathy quietly floated with them for while. The mom and baby both surfaced at the same time to breath before diving deeper.

There are 30 springs in the Silver Springs group. The largest of the spring vents is Mammoth Spring, which has two vents in the main pool. The largest of the two vents is located approximately 100 feet east of the glass-bottom boat loading area. The vent is a horizontal, oval-shaped opening about 5 feet high and 135 feet wide beneath a limestone ledge. The depth of water measured over the vent opening is about 30 feet. The second vent is in the northwestern part of the main pool near the boat loading area. The spring pool measures about 300 feet north to south and 200 feet east to west. The water is clear and light blue, with aquatic vegetation and algae across the sandy spring bottom and limestone substrate. It was dizzying looking down into the deep pools.

Despite the crowds, we still managed to see a lot of wildlife. We leave you with a beautiful Great White Heron.