Florida Springs: Fanning Springs & Manatee Springs, Levy County, FL

The road between Orlando and Dekle Beach passes by quite a few springs, as I noticed on my last trip there. I took a short trip to Dekle this weekend (which will be the subject of another post) and decided to stop at one spring on the way there and another on my way back. 

On the way there I stopped at Fanning Springs, which is located in the tiny community of (wait for it...) Fanning Springs on the western edge of Levy County. To be honest, I found the springs rather disappointing. While the water was crystal clear and bright blue - and while I was the ONLY person there other than park staff - I was still a bit let down. For starters, even though the water was perfectly clear, there was no vegetation whatsoever inside the spring head area. None, other than at the very edges. While this might make the springs more comfortable for swimmers (I admit, freshwater "seaweed" is always disconcerting when it rubs along my legs while I'm swimming), it gave the springs a bit of a dead appearance, in my opinion. The other disappointing factor was the concrete dock which separated the springs proper from the run leading out to the river. Again, convenient for swimmers (and boaters), but god what an eyesore.

However, despite my feeling of disappointment, it was an absolutely gorgeous day to visit a spring. Not only was the sky clear and blue, not only was I the only visitor at the park, but it was the first day that it actually felt like fall here in Florida. It's so rare here to have a gorgeous, sunny day that isn't blisteringly hot and tormentingly humid, so having a day of perfect weather made sitting on the spring-shore quite pleasant. And while there might not have been a lot of aquatic plant life, I saw quite a few fish and turtles. I'm guessing they were enjoying the fact that there were no humans in the water to disturb them! I saw an insane amount of mullet, plus one super adorable baby turtle who was only about two inches in diameter.
Mullet!
He wasn't much bigger than this in real life.
On  my way home from Dekle, I stopped at Manatee Springs, located just outside of Chiefland, FL in Levy County. Sadly, despite the arrival of fall temperatures, it's still too warm for manatees to be seeking warmth inside the springs, so I didn't see any. Also, when I arrived at the park it was about to start pouring. I also knew that I had two more hours of driving to go. As such, I didn't spend much time at the park. That being said, I found Manatee Springs much more to my liking than Fanning. The springs seemed more natural (as in no giant concrete dock marring your view), and they seemed a lot more alive vegetation-wise. That being said, there were quite a few swimmers and scuba divers, meaning that the fish and turtles were nowhere to be seen.


You can walk all the way around the spring head. One side (the far side) is bordered by a man-made wall. From the other side, one can walk right into the water from a natural shoreline (although it does have that ramp that the boy is standing on).

Florida Springs: Wekiwa Springs, Apopka, FL

The two closest springs to Orlando are Blue Spring and Wekiwa Springs. I went to Blue Spring last week, so this week I drove over to Apopka to visit Wekiwa Springs. I’ve been to Wekiwa before, but not since 2007. The park tends to fill up on the weekends (you’ll be denied entry if the park is full), but if you go in the morning on a weekday (especially during the school year) it’s not crowded at all. Unfortunately, if you get there around 10:30-11:00 the light is in exactly the wrong spot for getting really quality spring pictures (sigh) although if you want pictures with few people in the spring, it’s the perfect time. Kind of a mixed blessing.

Unlike Blue Spring, at Wekiwa Springs you can walk right up to the spring head; however, unlike Blue Spring (which is still in its natural state), the spring head at Wekiwa is surrounded by a man-made wall. (Many of Florida’s springs were enclosed in such structures in the early 1900s.)

While I didn’t have much luck photographing the springs, I did get some pretty nice insect and animal photographs while hiking the two miles to Sand Lake and back. Of course, Sand Lake itself was pretty underwhelming and not exactly worth the effort (especially when you can drive there instead of hoofing it for four miles).

Grasshopper sex.


Sand Lake, rather underwhelming.

Laborious Driving, Beachless Beaches, and a Turtle

This holiday weekend I did a LOT of driving. I drove from Orlando, FL to Dekle Beach, FL. From there I drove up to Waycross, GA, then back down to Orlando. I’m including a map so you can see what I’m talking about:

As I mentioned in my last post, my mom’s boyfriend, F, has purchased a vacation home in Dekle Beach, FL. Now, despite being named Dekle Beach and being located along Florida’s Gulf Coast, there is no beach at Dekle Beach. There’s a lot of scenic marsh, but no beach. There’s also not much of anything there (they don’t even so much as have a convenience store). It’s a pretty tiny community, and its one claim to fame is fairly horrific: ten people were killed there (including a family from my hometown) back in 1993 during a freak storm that pretty much appeared out of nowhere. (See the wikipedia article on the storm, as well as an article in which survivors recall the events of that evening. It's pretty harrowing stuff.) F’s house is one of the ones that was around before 1993 and survived the storm, so here’s hoping it survives whatever else Mother Nature throws at it.

The plan was that I would drive up from Orlando, mom would drive down from Waycross, and F would drive down from his home in north Florida. I thought the goal was to get there around noon. I got there at 12:45 and no one was around. I should also mention that while mom and F have keys, I do not. Also, the AC in my car works well while the car is moving, but not so much while it’s sitting still. And it was Florida in late August, meaning that it was HOT. Mochi and I went for a long walk around Dekle Beach (although eventually Mochi just sat down and refused to go any farther. He does have awfully short legs, and it was quite hot out). We then sat in the screened in area underneath F’s house, waiting for someone to come and let us into the air conditioning.

Mochi's a hot dog :-)
Not really what you think of when someone says "it's a beach community in Florida"




There were houses here before the 1993 storm.

Once mom and F arrived, we set off for nearby Keaton Beach. Unlike Dekle Beach, Keaton Beach actually has a small stretch of – gasp! – beach. Unfortunately, the one restaurant located in Keaton Beach has gone out of business (if you’re interested in a cool business location, it’s up for sale…) meaning that our lunch ended up being whatever had been baking in the tray at the local gas station for god knows how many days. Also, the water was incredibly shallow and rather overgrown with seaweed. Not the best beach, but good for a short dip if you don’t mind sitting in the seaweed. There were tons of hermit crabs. I also saw a garfish with a smaller fish in its mouth, as well as a stingray and quite a few sea-birds.

Keaton Beach at low tide: sea grass everywhere!

Mom and me

After our “swim” we returned to Dekle Beach, where we did some more walking (much to poor Mochi’s chagrin), and we may have explored an area clearly labeled with ‘no trespassing’ signs, haha.

It was also clearly marked with these signs about not stealing palm trees. Um, ok.

Mom :-)


The view from F's porch in the morning light

The next morning, I left to drive to Waycross. Somebody has to feed mom’s animals while she’s enjoying the beach house! My stint in Waycross was wholly uneventful, and I returned to Orlando on Monday. I did stop on US 1 to rescue a turtle who was foolishly walking south down the center of the southbound lanes. It terrified Mochi.

I’m still posting stuff regularly over on my Kyrgyzstan blog, so go check it out!

A short break from my studies.

I've knocked two of the three midterms down (the third is next Tuesday), and I'm just about ready to submit my conference proposal... now it's time to work on my web-post (due Monday), exam #3 (Tuesday), and my presentation (Wednesday). I figured I had enough time to run Mochi down to the dog park for a little squirrel chasing :-)

Bird-watching with Mochi

Haha. Bird-watching with Mochi.

Mochi loves birds. He doesn't want to eat them, he just wants to run up to to them with glee and say hello. Not surprisingly, we have yet to meet a bird that doesn't misinterpret this action.

I took Mochi to the Little Econ Greenway this morning after our trip to the dog park. He really enjoyed walking down by (and splashing in) the water, as well as attempting to greet the local bird population. Luckily for them, pets must be leashed at the Greenway. Unluckily for me, photographing anything while holding an eager dog on a leash is a bit of a challenge. There were some great potential bird shots that didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked due to either Mochi tugging on me or the fact that I didn't want to get close enough for him to scare the birds. Still, it was a good morning.

I know this isn't the greatest picture, but check out the turtle balancing on his belly with his legs up in the air!
And for those of you looking for some Charlie action, here she is playing fetch, while Mochi looks on.

Leading horses to water, and other exercises in futility

My latest suicidal turtle - an adorable little softshell with an incredibly expressive face.
Seconds after taking this picture, he was off, swimming merrily away.
Elvis, Donnie, Velvet, and Solly - at the vet for their last round of shots. They were definitely NOT afraid. Want to adopt them? They're incredibly sweet and friendly!
Solly and Elvis
Donnie
Velvet
Now that Mama and her babies have had all their shots, they're all free-range out at the land with everybody else.
Donnie and Solly, lounging in the grass
Egret - this fellow was just hanging out near our land
FINALLY!!! We have a well!! The man who installed it (the asshole who threatens to shoot kittens) is a total dick and not at all someone I would recommend. He is a professional well-driller, who has been in business for years; I've no idea how he has stayed in business if he treats most of his customers like he treated us. But at least it's finally installed and running.
Look! Running water! Time to get the wall around the tub tiled.

We moved the horses' water trough away from the hand-pump well over to the fence by the electric well so that we could fill it with the hose... Mom's attempt to lead the horses to their new source of water was not entirely successful...