A return to Silver Springs

Enjoying the Silver River, 4/13/19

We have been to Silver Springs several times over the years and have always loved it, so we made it our next stop in the Crawl Out of Florida. Easy drive, no entry line, nice weather, perfect. This park is divided into two parts: camping/recreating and the old Silver Springs attraction which is famous for its glass bottom boat tours of the springs. Campers get free admission so we have been to the springs several times and taken both the regular and extended tours. They’re both great. This trip, Patti wanted to go kayaking, so that’s what we did.

We went over on a Saturday morning which could have been bad, but wasn’t. We spoke with the girl behind the counter, money changed hands, and soon we were floating through the park. And it was great. We quickly got the hang of controlling the kayak (well, mostly) and had a lovely float down a side channel of the Silver River. Very wooded and not too hot. And, because of course there are, there were monkeys.

Back in the 1930s, a local entrepreneur (Colonel Tooey) had the bright idea of importing some monkeys to an island and then charging tourists to see them “in the wild”. What he didn’t realize was that rhesus monkeys could swim, which they quickly did. Hence, several colonies of monkeys are roaming about Central Florida (predominately here at the park). And there’s your fun fact of the day. (Bonus fun facts: they filmed portions of “Sea Hunt” and some Tarzan movies here. If you don’t know what “Sea Hunt” is, ask your parents.)

The bonus to the day was that I decided to charge the batteries of a very old waterproof camera (an Olympus 720, to be exact) that I hadn’t used in a decade or so. To my great surprise and pleasure it still works great, so see below.

Finally, we brought Nora out of Sybil in a harness and leash. She’s not quite comfortable yet, but she sure is interested. Stay tuned on that front.