Florida - Day 8 - Silver Springs and manatees

Silver Springs State Park, Silver Springs

Sunday, 22 January 2023

today's route

Last night's strange campground was at that straight-north line that seems to go to Orange Springs - and I think that road I had to take did go there.  The campground was short of that town.  Back on the county road I turned west through Eureka and Ft. McCoy before turning south to Ocala, and then east to Silver Springs.  I know that's where I went because the map said so, but there were no highway signs telling me any of this.

Instead I saw signs warning me about loose cattle.  I saw a couple of Confederate flags, several Trump signs, a dozen or so vultures hanging out by the road and lots of horse-related stuff.  Quite a few obvious horse farms.  And a place called Jumbolaire Aviation and Equestrian Estates.  This is a private community geared entirely for people with their own airplanes.  Each of the 38 home sites has taxi access to the runway.  And this runway is the "longest private paved runway in North America!"  Their webpage doesn't mention horses, though I suppose if a house has room for an airplane, it also has room for some horses?  Strange.

But I've learned that Ocala calls itself the Horse Capital of the World.  I guess they're willing to fight Lexington, KY, for the honor and in fact have actually received a US patent on the phrase.  (People are so strange.)  Here's an odd article explaining the battle.   https://www.bloodhorse.com/ky-and-fl-in-horse-capital-battle

In Ocala I saw horses (statues) in various poses and very decorated all around town.  Attractive place.

Immediately next door is the town of Silver Springs and Silver Springs State Park, famous for its glass bottom boat tours, which I decided I should take, despite its $12/senior price.  I hadn't made a reservation because I didn't know when I'd be able to get there.  I ended up getting to the campground area at 10:40, which was too early to check in but they gave me proof of being a camper, which meant no admission fee to the park (which would have been in addition to the tour price).  I went straight over to the park, but they made me park the RV a long way away, so Dext and I took the walk over to buy a ticket for the tour.  By then the earliest they could fit me on was 2:10.  Dext and I walked around the 2 large parking lots a couple of times, we all had lunch, and then I went over early in case I could squeeze onto an earlier tour.  Well, at least I was on time for mine.

All the tour boats looked like this.

Note the bird sitting on the edge of the boat.

Enlarging it from that other photo lost much of the definition.  Both Anhingas and Cormorants live here and they're much alike in appearance.  One of the main differences is in the bill, which you can't really see in this photo.  The Anhinga gets its food by stabbing it, so it has a straight, narrow, sharply pointed bill.  The Cormorant has a curve at the end of its bill and dives for an extended period chasing fish in the water.

I have no photos from the boat tour because I was too busy looking.  But we got to see 4 manatees, 2 alligators, and many turtles, plus various birds and lots of fish.  The water was mostly very clear, though the level had gone down and in some areas there seemed to be a lot of green color from the algae in it.  

For anyone who remembers the old Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt TV program, this is where many of the episodes were filmed.  They had a lot of guest actors who went on to become quite famous, including Lloyd's sons Beau and Jeff.  Here's the Wikipedia page, for those who can't quite remember what the show was about.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Sea-Hunt

This location was also used for an episode of I Spy, starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby.  Our family never missed an episode and, though I don't remember any of them, I do remember how much we enjoyed them.  One episode that was otherwise filmed in Greece had part filmed here and was something to do with a bunch of statues of gods that were underwater.  After filming, most of the statues were taken out of the water, but 3 of them are still there - and the tour guide showed them to us.  Weird-looking.  And if you want a refresher on this program, here's the Wikipedia page.   https://en.wikipedia.org/I-Spy

Visitors have the option of a 30-minute tour, which I took, or a 90-minute tour, which I'd have liked to take but didn't want to leave my critters for that long.  Still, I definitely enjoyed the tour I took and would recommend it to anyone.

The campground was down the road about a mile and was very pleasant.  It was also very full, so I counted us lucky to have been able to get a campsite for the night.