I was up at 7:00 this morning.... I know,,,,, why, right, but I was awake at 5:30 anyway, because we all know how that works when you have set an alarm to wake you up, you wake up early so you don't sleep through the alarm. And why did I do this you ask.... well it was because I wanted to get over to the campground office right after they opened up in order to see if it would be possible for me to stay here for another week. And the reason for that is because I couldn't find any available camp sites over near Jacksonville, where I wanted to go, because I didn't realize that at this time of year, at least over in that area, you need to make reservations at least 2-3 months ahead of time..... Of course, what I didn't realize about the office here, is that it didn't actually open until 9:00 a.m. anyway.... duh! I could of slept another hour at least this morning.
   Even with all of that I did manage to get an extension on my site for the next week, so I didn't have to go back to the trailer and pack everything up and leave. Instead I went back to the trailer and took a nap.
   As it turned out I was up and going by late morning anyway, and by lunch time I was in the truck and heading south to Silver Springs State Park. This park use to be privately owned, but the state of Florida purchased it several years ago and turned it into one of their premier parks. I had been there several years ago but the part I was at today wasn't even open at that time. This part is where the actual springs come up out of the ground and in the past it had been a pretty large resort area with it's own water park tacked on to one edge. They are doing a lot of grounds work in and around the area as well as rehabbing some of the buildings, but they had the glass bottom boats running trips, so that is what I decided to do.
    The trip today was about 40 mins long and it was in an actual glass bottomed boat, which meant we, about 30 of us, were seated in a single row around the center section of the boat which had 3 large 1/2" thick panes of glass installed in the middle. I was a little bit skeptical about it all, but was pleasantly surprised to note that you could actually see everything under the water, fish, rocks and such, even down to 60+ feet deep.
    A pretty good narrative about the history and the flora and fauna of the spring run. One piece of info of note is that the main spring in the area, there are about 12 right near the source, spews out nearly 900,000 gallons of water per day. Well over a million gallons per day when you add them all together. All of it is crystal clear, 99% pure and 72 degrees F all year round, when it comes out of the ground. I wandered around the grounds for another hour or so, but the actual museum wasn't open today and it was to late in the afternoon to actually rent a canoe and paddle a little bit.
    Once done there it was already early evening so I stopped on the way back to the trailer and had some fast food and read a couple chapters in my book. Tonight it was time to watch a movie here in the trailer, so I spun up my copy of Avatar and watched big blue people do battle with puny humans. Of course there is more to the movie than that, but lets face it, we all wish we had our own personal dragon like critter we could fly on. Especially in a biome such as the one there on Pandora.
   It's going to be an early night for me tonight, so I am going to get the heck out of here and go to bed. 

*brk