Park #11-Silver River State Park

I know no one from Michigan or Ohio will feel sorry for us, but we continue to be disappointed by the weather this year. This trip will definitely go on record as the lousiest weather year for us! We are now at Silver River State Park, which is right outside of Ocala, Fl. The park is gorgeous - just as we remembered from being here two years ago. The sites here are about the biggest sites we've ever seen - Dave thinks our site is probably almost an acre of ground - and they're really nice, with a nice level gravel pad for parking the rig. We're here from last Sunday to this Sunday. We had an easy 70 mile run up to here, from Lake Louisa, and watched the SuperBowl (after fiddling with the satellite for a while). The Saints won - YAY! Monday was still a pretty nice day - close to 70 with sunny skies. The park is right outside this Ocala National Forest, which is a huge tract of land (383,000 acres!) with numerous lakes (600 according to the brochure!). We picked a nice lake to spend the day at - Half Moon Lake. When we were here two years ago, we visited quite a few of the lakes so had a pretty good idea what to expect. The lake itself was very pretty, but we had to go forever down this long, very bumpy road to get to the boat ramp. We spent the afternoon paddling (me) and fishing (Dave), and we built a nice fire when we got back to the site since Tuesday was supposed to be rainy. And BOY were they right - it poured almost all afternoon. We kind of killed the day with running around - we took a drive up to Salt Springs, in the national forest, to check out the campground (...not!). Then we went into Ocala and picked up a bunch of movies and stopped at one of our favorite bars - the Beef O'Brady (which is a franchise down here). We sat at the bar and got talking to this nice couple who live around here. They have 14 year old twins and were a wealth of information about the local and surrounding areas - they knew a lot about the whole "nature coast" over by Crystal River and Cedar Key. We will definitely be going back there on our next trip down this way! Anyway - it was kind of fun to just sit and chat with people - we always enjoy that.

It wasn't raining on Wednesday, but it was pretty cool - like mid-50's. We ran errands - found the Toyota dealership and got the oil changed, found a petstore and got catfood and kitty litter - all kinds of fun stuff like that (...do we have an exciting life down here or WHAT?). When we got back here we dragged the kayaks down to the landing on the Silver River so we could go for a paddle on Thursday. And when I say dragged, I mean it - the landing on the river is a good half mile from the parking area. Whew! This is the only thing we don't care for about this park - there isn't an easy way to get your boats in. We could have driven down to the public launching area, but then we would have had to load the kayaks back up - plus we wanted to paddle up into the actual springs and the state park landing is the half way point (i.e. if we put in at the public launch we'd have to paddle all the way up to the state park and then about the same distance again to get into the springs). So we dragged them! Anyway - today (Thursday) we spent the whole afternoon out on the river - and it was well worth the effort. What a beautiful river - it is crystal clear and there was no wind at all (compared to yesterday). It was still cool - again in the mid-50's - so we were kind of bundled up, but what a nice paddle. It's kind of different, because the springs are in the Silver Springs Nature Preserve Park, which is a commercial park that people pay admission to get into - we did this two years ago and it was very nice. There are glass-bottomed tour boats that take people all around the springs and everything, plus there are a couple of rides and lots of animals in cages to look at. The park and the springs are quite interesting - a number of movies and TV shows were filmed here, including a bunch of the old Tarzan movies and the Sea Hunt TV shows with Lloyd Bridges (doesn't that date us???). As I said, the park is a commercial enterprise - but they don't own the actual WATER - so people can come up the river in boats and stuff and paddle around and there's nothing they can do about it. It's so weird - you're paddling around inside of this park and there are all these tour boats in the river with you, with tourists all over the place - and there you are in your litttle kayak. Kind of funny! Anyway - the springs are really beautiful, deep and clear and a gorgeous turquoise color - I'm attaching a picture and I hope some of the color comes through. And FISH - oh my God, there were hundreds and hundreds of fish and we could see them like we were sitting on top of an aquarium - SO cool! We saw lots of turtles just swimming around underneath us and all kinds of different fish, including some really big alligator gars. There were also tons of birds, but we didn't see any alligators this time - probably too cold - nor did we see any monkeys. (There is a "colony" of wild monkeys along this river - they were accidentally turned loose in the woods years and years ago and populated like crazy. When we were down here two years ago we saw dozens of them, but I think they must be downriver from where we were today). Anyway - we went out onto the river before 1:00 and didn't get back to the landing until after 5:00 - we were pretty chilly but had a wonderful afternoon. I'm proud of us that we just keep finding stuff to do even though the weather is less than ideal - we just keep reminding ourselves that we're in Florida, it is sunny, and there isn't any snow! We have a few more days here, then we move on to park #12 - unreal!