Was feeling a bit antsy yesterday and in need of some new(er) scenery, so I loaded up the truck and drove on over to the Ichnetucknee Spring State Park and wandered around on their trails for a couple of hours. I was there last year at about this time and had one of my canoe's with me at that time, so I threw it in the water and spent about 4 hours paddling up, and then back down, the 4 miles or so of river that are in the park. Had a wonderful time of it and got to see many different critters along the way including a ton of turtles, birds and even a family of river otters.

   Didn't get to see that much of the river this time of course, but there were a few access points along the way and I did take a few more pictures. Not enough to really give everyone a feel for what a special place it is though, so I'm posting another batch of photo's today with a few new ones as well as a bunch from last year. Will only be annotating a few of them though.  

    Today has been a bit more low key. Brought one of my propane tanks, I have 2-30 lb ones, in to get it refilled, but the shop here in town was closed today for some reason. Not a big deal as there is still one nearly full tank on the trailer and it takes somewhere between 4 and 6 months for me to go through one of them. Will see if I can get back into town tomorrow though and see if I can't get it filled up and ready to go.

    Also visited the post office and mailed off a couple of things. Still need to hit the grocery store yet on the way out of town as I'm in need of some fresh veggies and fruit again. Otherwise it has been a nice slow day here in Florida.

Itchnetucknee Springs State Park - Dec 4, 2012

 & some from 2011



This is a 'Class A' spring which means it lets out a minimum of 50 million gallons of water per day. In this case it pumps out 65 to 110 million gallons based on how much rain there has been. This year has been pretty good up to about 3 months ago. Still plenty of water to boat on.

 



 



 



 



A white egret.



 



Lot's and lot's of turtles out sunning themselves. They are a little more acclimated to people evidently as a lot of them would stay out until you got quite close.



 



 



 



One of my favorite turtle pictures.

 

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 The water here is more than 10 feet deep. It is just so clear that it looks like you could wade across it easily.



There are other critters in the park too.