Juniper Springs

When we left Silver Lake we drove about 25 miles to Inverness, the home of our friends Helen & Paul Tempesta. Helen insists she loves to cook and made us a wonderful roast beef dinner, my favorite. It was nice to see them again and we camped in their yard.

On Sunday we left for our favorite campground Juniper Springs. I looked up when we had been here before. We camped and canoed here with the kids. in 1969, 1973 & 1975. The spring does not look that different from 48 years ago.

                               1969 View                                        2017 View

 

 

A lot more people paddle the river now. The park rents canoes & kayaks and can provide a shuttle for private boaters. One way that works out well for us is they can do a reverse shuttle for only $10. You drop your boat off at the put-in and then drive to the small parking lot at the take-out, where they will bring your driver back to the launch. The parking lot is small and has only a few parking places that we could fit our RV into, so I did the early 8:30 AM shuttle and got a parking spot. Years ago, I used to do my own bike shuttle, but the narrow bike lane on the busy state highways is too scary for me now.

The temperature was barely 50^oF but warmed to the mid 80’s when we took out.

I thought Monday would not be that busy for this 7 mile beautiful paddle down the shallow winding river. A canoe & two kayaks launched before we did but there had to be at least two dozen boats getting ready to launch. We saw nobody all day until about 2 miles before the end when we caught up to the three boats scouting the big rapid on the run. There is a big rock in the middle of a narrow chute but we didn’t make our run look too good. We paddled a little too left of the rock and clipped a small tree branch which turned us around. Maybe next time we will go a little slower and try not to show off.

This by far was the prettiest run of all our paddling in FL this year. I guess this is why we keep coming back, even though there is no power, water, TV or cell reception in the park. Ocala National Forest is large and has many wilderness campsites in the back country. But we love Juniper Springs for the beautiful spring and river. They take reservations here but they are only needed on the weekend.

Here is our planned route North to Ocean Pond and then to Stephen Foster Sate Park in the Okefenokee in Georgia.

After  we paddle there if the weather looks OK in Cleveland, we plan to head up through GA to Columbia, SC and follow I-77 home.