Saturday January 6, 2024 - We spent the day at Juniper Springs, riding our bikes and exploring the park. Juniper Springs is one of the many springs in Ocala National Forest. The springs are a constant, year round temperature of 72 degrees. The air temperature today was a high of 66, so Kevin decided he'd take a swim. He said it was a bit chilly, but not too bad. There are some hiking trails throughout the park, but all of the boardwalk trails are currently closed due to damage. The Florida trail, which runs from Fort Pickens in Pensacola to Big Cypress National Preserve (1500 miles) runs through the Juniper Springs Recreation Area. We saw several backpackers cutting through the park on the Florida Trail.
The Juniper Springs Millhouse sits on the main spring and was built by the CCC in 1935-1936. It was built to provide electricity to the recreation area when it wasn't possible to get electricity there, due to it's remoteness. It no longer generates electricity, but it has been preserved and houses a CCC exhibit (which wasn't open while we were there)
A view of the waterwheel
Someone's ready to jump in
That's all the farther I'm going
The Missouri Manatee
We walked to Fern Hammock Spring, which is not open for swimming, but is quite pretty
We got a mini Air fryer for the RV, so we're going to use it for the first time on this trip to make Trader Joes Kung Pao Chicken. We're hoping it's more versatile than the toaster oven we've been using, and it takes up about half the space that the toaster oven took. It was a quick easy meal: the chicken was cooked at 400 degrees for 10 minutes and we made a 90 second packet of Uncle Ben's microwave rice. What could be easier?
Kung Pao Chicken, rice and football
Sunday January 7, 2024 - Today we drove 30 minutes to Silver Springs State Park for a glass bottom boat ride. It was $12/person for a 30 minute tour. It was a great day to be on the water, and there were some nice hiking trails that we checked out after the boat ride. There are Rhesus macaque monkeys at Silver Springs which a boat operator, in the 1930's, released onto an island in Silver Springs (he released 6 monkeys to liven up his boat tour). Much to his surprise the monkeys were able to swim and escaped the island, and soon took over the park. There are supposedly 300 monkeys that live in Silver Springs today. We looked for them on our hike, but we heard that they are more likely to be out and about when it's a bit warmer.
This bench is built INTO the tree
We sat on the deck overlooking the springs while we waited for our boat tour
The glass bottom boats
Quite a few movies were filmed at Silver Springs in the 30's: "Rebel Without a Cause", "The Creature of the Black Lagoon" and 6 Tarzan movies
Glass bottom boat views of grass (oh and one little fish)
And yay, we got to see a manatee
The captain turned off the motor as we floated across the manatee
Our first aligator of the trip!
the mouth of one of the springs
an old boat on the bottom
Monday January 8, 2024 - While we were in town yesterday we bought a cheap mask/snorkel set. Kev tried it out in our spring to see if it was any good. He said it worked just fine (and he had fun checking out the spring), so next time we're in town we'll buy another.
Kevin had the spring to himself today
Glass bottom boat views of grass (oh and one little fish)
