Another beautiful day here in the deep south. Was up at a decent hour this morning and after breakfast and a chance to read the comics, email and facebook, it was off to Wakulla Springs State Park. A bit south and east of Tallahassee, Wakulla is another one of those huge natural springs that pop up all over Florida. This one releases an amazing 690 million gallons per day, yep I didn't misquote that, at peak release. It's enough water to produce a freaking river right from it's mouth.

   I got there just after noon and walked around the grounds for a bit. According to one of the rangers the park has been occupied for centuries. In fact one site along the river has been carbon dated back further than any other Native American settlement in the United States. The Spanish, of course, found it early on in recent history and once they and the Americans managed to displace all the natives the whites started 'developing' it. Lucky for us most of those attempts ended in failure or bankruptcy so much of the land within the park looks like it would of 200 years ago.

    One guy did have big plans to turn the spring into a big tourist resort with hotel and lots of amenities. But he managed to run out of money after getting the hotel part of it built. The Fed's came in after that and turned it into a rehab spot for WW II GI's coming back from the war. They finally gave it up to the State, and Florida went ahead and added it into their park system.

    The hotel is still here and is still being used as one. Not sure how, or who, runs it, but evidently the park does seem to make money. I was more interested in the natural parts of the park so I ended up taking an hour+ boat ride on the river with a group of other people and one of the park rangers. Really one of the best values ever. For $8.00 you get to tour about a mile and a half down the river and then back up the other side. Along the way you can pretty much count on seeing all kinds of bird life, turtles, alligators and during the winter, manatees. We got to see lot's of all of those things, quite close up in some cases. I took over 250 photo's and pared them down into the one's shown below. Lot's of birds of course, but a few surprises. Hope you enjoy them.

Wakulla Springs State Park, Florida - Nov 20, 2012 

The front of the hotel. A very pretty building done in the 'Meditterarian Rivival' style, so I'm told. Lot's of interesting people have evidently stayed here before. Back in the 50's and 60's there was a lot of movie filming that took place in the park, including several Tarzan movies and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I still remember that movie as scaring the heck out of me when I was younger.

The bottom of this picture starts about 2/3rd of the way across the river, so you get an idea of how much water is in it. The actual spring mouth is about 500 yards to the left.

Lot's of vultures come into the park every winter for some reason. This is just a few that were flying today.

A White Ibis.

Lot's of bald cypress grow along each bank as well as out in the river on little islands that they have created for themselves.

 

A female Anhinga.

Lot's of alligators along the shore and in the water. The problem was in getting a clear view of them.

 

A Little Blue Heron.

A Slider turtle of some kind. Or as they call them down here in the south, a Cooter.

White Ibis.

Female  Anhinga, or Snake Bird. 

Another gator swimming. This one was maybe 6'-7' long.

White Ibis.

Turkey Vultures.

Lot's of Turkey Vultures. There were several hundred sitting in several trees in this area. Kinda creepy!

A whole train load of Cooters.

 

Another female Anhinga.

This one was maybe 8'-9'.

Cormorants of some kind. I really like their blue eyes.

 

A male Anhinga.

Great Blue Heron.

Another male Anhinga. This bird is one of the few where the female is actually more colorful than the male.

We saw maybe 30-40 manatees on our tour. Of course the hard part is getting a picture that looks like something other than a patch of sand on the bottom of the river. This is about as good as I could get today.

Female Anhinga.

This is another cormorant. It seems that over the years they have learned to follow the tour boats as they move up and down the river. Their props, even though shrouded, stir up the bottom sand and vegetation and scare out little crawdads and other edible bits. They had no problem staying right with us, even underwater.

The colors today were all that you could as for.