Slowly Heading North, now back in Juniper Springs

I was browsing through Facebook and noticed that a friend from Morgantown, WV was flying to Orlando for two days and one night and was wanting to do something different. I answered back, we are only 50 miles west of Orlando and if you rent a car we could paddle Friday afternoon on a beautiful natural river, the Withlacoochee South.

Nori jumped at the offer and got to our camp just before noon. After little light lunch we hopped in my canoe and paddled about 9 miles of flatwater and saw lots of birds and turtles and a few small alligators.

Nori took up my offer to try out our small dinette bed and sleep overnight instead of booking a hotel room. He gave Peggy & I a nice treat by taking us out to a good Mexican restaurant in Brooksville. He drove back early Saturday morning to make his medical conference.

On Sunday Peggy & I did a 8 AM 21 mile bike ride from camp to the start of the bike trail, the weather is getting into the high 80’s everyday. In fact Tampa set a record for the hottest February ever, the high each day averaged 10^o F above normal.

On Monday we needed to  leave our campsite since there was another camper with reservations arriving that day. We had hoped to stop at Paul & Helen’s after we took a 14 mile ride on the trail from Floral City to Inverness and return, but they were tied up so we did a lot of grocery shopping and spent the night in a Walmart in Silver Springs.

We got an early start on Tuesday and decided to paddle the Silver River which starts at the big spring where the glass bottom boats can tour around the Spring. Two years ago we did this and Peggy was sad that it did not seem like the river we always paddled before it became a State Park. I thought it might have been that we were there right after a heavy storm and the water was cloudy.

This year it was great. More birds then we saw anywhere on our trip this year. The water was very clear and you could see big fish near the bottom of the 25’ deep river. Peggy thought there was more grass on the bottom but maybe that’s what attracted the Manatees. How in the world did they get here, it has to be over 150 miles from the Atlantic Ocean? I believe this young Manatee was born and will spend his whole here in the nice 72^oF water of the Silver River. Over the years we always started the trip in a roadside park near the confluence of the river. This makes a 2 hour relatively hard upstream paddle in the swift current using the eddies to move upstream. It only takes and hour to get back. We didn’t see any monkeys this year, maybe the park has finally removed this evasive species from the river corridor.

There is a State Park here but the river access requires a one mile walk to get to a dock, a long carry or pull cart, but I found out they now rent kayaks right at the head of the Spring and also allow you to put in a private boat for a fee. I believe it’s $2/person to enter the park and $4 a boat to put-in there. This would allow you to paddle the 5 miles entirely downstream if you had a shuttle back or paddle down and back a few miles since the prettiest part of the river is closer to the source. So I still recommend this river as a great FL paddling experience.

We got to Juniper Springs about 1 PM and had no trouble getting a nice campsite. We paddled the river twice in December but really like the challenging winding 7 mile long paddle. The park runs a reverse shuttle where you take your vehicle to the end and they provide the driver a ride back for only $10. I took the RV down about 8:30 AM and we were the only one on the river with our early start. We had lunch in our RV at the take-out. This is not a river to paddle on weekends. Hundreds of boats with lots of swimmers due to the narrow winding river.

We are now slowly moving North, we decided to head up to Northern FL to Ocean Pond Campground in Osceola National Forest. Peggy likes it because they have electric power & water along with good cell service & TV reception, Ocala NF is more wild but has great private campsites and shower faculties.