Catching up with friends

  Silver Springs, Florida, United States
Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Sunday January 6th
Arrived just in time to get into a camp site at the Silver Springs State Park.  Great site with woods, privacy, the wonderful smell of pine and the sounds of peepers and birds.  Had dinner at a Chinese buffet and fell asleep.  

Today was in the 70's!! Shorts and tee shirts and feeling super!  Did a fantastic bike ride through the primeval forest here at the park.  Hard to imagine that a mile or so off the VERY busy route 40 that runs through Ocala and Silver Springs this haven of natural wonder exists.  It sends you back into thousands or even millions of years ago.

bike and walking trail

path to the river

so primeval

The biking took us to the Silver River that runs through this park.  The water is crystal clear! You can see right to the bottom! We sat quietly for a half hour and saw and heard a multitude of animals including huge turtles and maybe a small alligator, huge bowfin fish, wood storks, cranes, egrets,  Ibis, a large black bird we still need to figure out and a little black long necked fishing bird we don't recognize.  So much life here in the fork of the river.

ramp into Silver River

looking left

straight ahead

looking right

  





 Connected with Matthew Elliot and Dave and Claudia Pesino by phone and made some plans.  Can't wait to entertain Matthew here at the campsite for dinner Wednesday night! What shall I make?

Plans to meet up with Dave and Claudia at Rainbow Springs Thursday morning around 10:00am.  We will all go kayaking and or canoeing on the Rainbow Springs River near their home in Hernando.  And then for a picnic before heading to their country club!  Now we're talking!!!  Dave says maybe even meet up with Big Doug from Poughquag! 

I love the idea of catching up with friends all over the USA!!

Drove over to Silver Springs, about 30 minutes away, to take get a tour and take a yoga class at Amrit Desai, GuruDev's Yoga Center.   Amrit Desai was also the founder of Kripalu, a world known yoga center in Lenox, Mass.  Charlott gave us a tour of the grounds and main building housing the accomodations and one yoga studio.  The entire property had been a private estate situated on Lake Kerr.  A beautiful place.  The class was just what we both needed and the style of yoga was perfect for 2 people who have been away from stretching for so long.

Entrance to Amrit Desai Yoga Center

Main Bldg Amrit Desai Center

Dec. 9th (Wed.)  Got a call from Phil De Rosa who is out in TX right now.  He'll be landing in Cocoa Beach on Tuesday night and we'll try to get down there to hook up with him and possibly check out a shuttle launch if we get lucky with timing.  Phil says that the water is warm enough to swim down there so we'll finally be getting into the water. It will be good to see him and catch up in an "out of context location".  We have really enjoyed seeing NY friends in out of state settings.  The experience is kind of surreal and bonding at the same time.

Yesterday we got a call from Patrick Gigliotti up in NY. He was offering for us to stay at his family's place that is about 45 minutes from here.  It was a nice surprise to hear from him and his generous offer was greatly appreciated.  To our surprise, Jodie and I have no desire (yet) to leave the RV to spend the night somewhere else.  We've been sleeping in our "new home" for over 7 straight weeks and it's now so familiar and convenient that it would be kinda weird to sleep somewhere else.

We still haven't seen any gators in the wild, but we think we heard a "gator grunt" when we were biking through the off-road biking trail that winds in a loop through the swamp.  The trail was very narrow and had lots of minor obstacles to navigate.  When we finally stopped back at the river to see what was going to be there at dusk, Jodie asked; "You heard that too, didn't you?"  We had been moving along without stopping in order to make it through the trail, but both of us were silently wondering if we had just missed seeing a gator.
   
Took a trip over to Juniper Springs State Park this afternoon and went for a swim in their "gator free spring".  The water is always 72 degrees year round and the color of the water is light light blue in the places where the bottom is sandy.  They built the stone walls around the spring in the late 1920s and it's been in use since the 1930s.  The water felt cold at first, but it was over 80 degrees today, so it was nice and refreshing.

Juniper Spring

built in the 30's

Always 72 degree water

Jodie happy to be swimming

gorgeous temperature!

another mermaid?

After we got out of the water a crazy woman named Gretchen who claimed to be a member of the mermaids, told us that there have been gators in the spring we just got out of.  She was tearing all of the beautiful ferns out of the stone walls that encompass the spring and when Jodie asked her what she was doing, she replied that she was removing the places for the gators to hide.  Gretchen kept tearing out the ferns and throwing them up onto the grass until she got tired.  When I asked her how the gators climbed over the rock walls or over the giant water wheel (the kind of 20' wheel that old grist mills have) which are the only means of access to the spring area, she changed the subject and said there were also eels in the spring.  While the water is truly crystal clear right to the bottom, I looked around and failed to see any eels or gators.  Gretchen said that the grass growing at the bottom of the spring was eel grass (I guess that must mean that where eel grass grows, eels must live).  She then went on to tell about all of the people (5 or 6) that had fallen out of canoes on the local stream and been eaten by the gators.  Some "...weren't totally eaten, only maimed and badly disfigured, but they might just as well have been eaten."  

I can safely say that neither of us want to hear any more stories, real or imagined, about gators eating anything ....but other gators.

There is a museum here at Silver Springs State Park that we ignored till meeting a couple in an inflatable kayak at the river ramp.  Ric and Linda from Colorado were successfully inflating and deflating their kayak and enjoying it thoroughly.  They, perhaps have solved the mystery of our utter failure and despair in tying to inflate ours.  We met them in a torrential down pour, we on our bikes at the river and they arriving back from a wonderful paddle.  They say Rhesus monkeys were let go on the island in the river for a movie many years ago.  They were released onto the island because it was believed they could not swim.  Not true....they live all through this swamp today and are multiplying every year! 

Ric and Linda suggested we use the rain time to check out the museum.  We did! It is perhaps one of the best museums Andy and I have had the pleasure of visiting. For $2 you get to see excellent exhibits of aquifer and soil composites along with an extensive collection of artifacts and .......

Short Faced Bear and Andy

Mammoth

Saber tooth

Dug out canoe

Seminole Indian garb

wrestling an anaconda underwater!

Many movies made here

There was way more than I could capture into this blog site!! Apparently many movies have been filmed in these wild forests and on these amazingly clear watered spring rivers. The movie memorabilia was super! 

We never did get to catch up with Matthew Elliot due to his hectic schedule and the rain and our decision to let the man stay focused on his horse events!  But intrude we did with Dave and Claudia Pesino.   I have made a new entry of Rainbow Springs because I got so many gorgeous pix!