Juniper Springs

The springs hasn’t changed much since 1969 when we first visited the park with Jeff and Pam.

However hurricanes the past two years, dropped a few trees and damaged the nice boardwalk that parallels the first half mile of Juniper Run. The damage is not that bad but it’s been closed for two years. Excuses like no money, forest fire danger were ridicules. I’ll bet it could be fixed in one week if anybody cared to fix it. We walked past the barricades and explored the entire boardwalk. We found 3 or 4 small sections missing but the rest was perfectly usable.

The walk allows visitors to see the beautiful white sand bottom stream and watch the inept paddlers going by.

We decided to do an early paddle on Tuesday morning. They do a shuttle for private paddlers for only $10. I used to do a bike shuttle, about 8 miles on very busy state highways. Years ago unless you had a second car, this was your only option and early morning traffic was very light. But now, we just drive our RV to the put-in, drop Peggy off with the canoe and drive to the take-out parking lot where there is room for my RV, if you get there early. The park service then drives you back to the put-in.

The river was much higher than we have seen it in years, so the 3 mph current was great and there was more room to maneuver around all the fallen and overhanging  trees,

However they still tell paddlers the 9-1/2 mile run will take 4 to 5 hours. We saw no one else on the run, due to our early start. We paddled as slow as we could and it took only 2-1/2 hours. However when we watched the rental boats launch and the lack of any paddling knowledge, some of those paddlers may not make it in 5 hours. I guess that is why the put-in closes at noon.

The weather has been great for the past two weeks, High 70’s and sunny every day. On Wednesday morning we decided to do another early morning paddle on Juniper Run. They were predicting 80^o temperatures with sunny skies. One good thing about taking our RV to the takeout is that it gets more sun than our campsite so the solar panels charge our batteries better.

We saw about 6 deer standing next to the stream at several places along the way but no alligators and very few birds today. They are predicting rain tomorrow and we will leave in the morning to do some grocery shopping on our way to Silver Lake in the Withlacoochee State Forest. We like this campground since it is on a lake which is a wide spot in the Withlacoochee River, which is a nice scenic paddle. It is also next to the 46 mile paved bike trail that runs from Rainbow Springs to about 10 miles south of Silver Lake.

They finally started to repair the boardwalk on Wednesday but they said it would take another month, they sure are milking this job.