Woke up to a wonderful day this morning. Could tell it had cleared off finally last night, just because it was much colder in the trailer this morning than it had been over the last week or so. Bright blue sky and a brilliant sun, it was going to be a good day to be out and about.

    Had told myself that if the weather did clear up the one place I really wanted to return to, just south and a bit east of Tallahassee, was Wakulla Springs State Park. Looked like today was going to be that day. Had a quick breakfast and cleaned up around the trailer before loading up the truck and getting on the road.

   Only about an hour from the trailer, I arrived at the park just in time to book a trip on one of the tour boats that take people out on the Wakulla River for a one hour narrated tour. At only $8 per person this is one of the best deals around and is certainly the cheapest boat tour I have found in any of the state parks that offer them. One park, Blue Springs, charges more than $25 per person and I had to wonder why until I realized that all of the other places have leased out their tours to a private operator. Where as the ones here are run by the actual park staff. I'm not saying that I know for sure, but I would hazard a guess that not having to worry about making a lot of profit is one of the reasons it is so much cheaper. This is even though I also think that the rangers who conduct the tours also make a real wage vrs someone who works for one of the charter companies. Just saying; maybe having the government do a few things is sometimes a better deal all around.

    I and the other six people on the trip soon boarded the boat and our guide backed us out of the slip and headed us down river. We motored downstream for about a mile before turning around and coming back up the other side. Along the way we saw all kinds of different birds as well as turtles, alligators and manatees. A nice narrated dialogue by the ranger told us about the spring and the history of the area, including the fact that it hosted several movie sets over the early years including two different Tarzan movies, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the underwater scenes of 'Airplane 1977'. 

     The boat ride takes about an hour to complete before dropping you back at the dock so after that I wandered around and checked out the old resort hotel that had been built about 100 years ago. A neat place, you can still go there and rent a room or two for a stay. There are also several miles worth of trails through the surrounding woods so I wandered around on a few of them for a couple of hours. Nothing real interesting there except for spotting a couple armadillo's and finding a gopher turtle crossing the path. It was just nice to be outside again.

    Hung out at the park for several hours until my stomach started to rumble from hunger. It was time to go find some fast food and sit down for a little bit. I spent about an hour reading my book and then headed to a Target store in order to find a couple plastic bins. I had come to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to put pretty much everything that lives under my bed in a waterproof container. Even though I feel like I now have a handle on all of the water lines under there, and that no other ones are going to blow out, I just don't want to take that chance again. And if $20 worth of plastic will help me sleep better at night, so be it.

    As I said, I'll try to get a few more photo's worked up and posted tomorrow if I can. In the meantime I hope you will enjoy these.

Wakulla Springs State Park, Florida - Nov. 19, 2013

Near the head of the spring I am just about ready to board the boat that will take me on a one hour cruise down one side of the Wakulla River and then back up the other side.

A beautiful day today so there was a ton of wildlife to see along the way. Here is a Anhinga, a water bird who catches it's food, usually fish, crustaceans, snails and such, by diving for them. Having no oil gland they have to spend time drying their water logged wings out periodically so they don't just sink when they dive in.

There were dozens of manatee's in the river at this time so it was easy to spot them as we boated by. None of them seemed to be all that bothered by us.

It is fall even down here in Florida. Some of these colored leaves are on deciduous type trees. But many of these red trees are evergreen like cypress which normally look much more like needle bearing fir's. The only difference is that they lose all of their needles every year just like other trees lose their leaves.

Cypress love the water and can, in fact, sprout in water that is 18"-24" deep. Once they grow above the surface of the surrounding water they start collecting detritus  until they have made their own little island. What a wonderful place for wildlife.

Another one of the locals.... saw lots of small to medium gators sunning themselves on the shore and in the shallows. There was one or two that approached the full size 10'-12'. This one is maybe 8' long.

Another view of all of the little cypress islands out in the river. Note that all of the water you are seeing here came out of the ground not more than a 1/4 mile upstream from here. At an average depth of maybe 8'-12' you can see that it is indeed possible that this thing is spewing out millions and millions of gallons of water everyday. In the case of this spring, which is classified as a Class 'A' spring, it means at least 50 million gallons per day. Amazing!

I'm just captivated with the view everywhere you look.

More cypress trees.

The last photo for today. I will try to get a few more sorted and cropped for tomorrow..... won't promise though.