Prior to RVing and mobile living, Florida was a place I went to visit Disney World and Universal in Orlando. I rarely spent more than a week at a time in the state.
Because a friend of mine lives in Crystal River, Florida, we decided to spend a month in this area based on what he told me what was there. All I can say is “OH MY!”. There are springs through Florida but it is only in a few places where the springs feed into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the warm waters of these springs that hundreds of manatees move into the rivers of Crystal River during the winter months.
It was this phenomenon that encouraged us to try out kayaking for the first time. The cost to rent a kayak per day is not that bad, but we wanted to kayak a lot while there. After looking at our options, we decided to buy blow-up kayaks which only cost $60 each. It was with these kayaks that we tackled the springs of the Crystal River region.
On our first adventure down the Weeki Wachee River, we saw about 10 manatees and this was in the October timeframe before the majority of the manatees come in from the Gulf. It is just so AMAZING to see these majestic animals that are the size of our kayaks in the crystal-clear water below us.
We had such an awesome time on this river, we started to look for other spring-fed rivers to kayak on. After the Weeki Wachee River, we went down the Rainbow River where we also saw otters.
Our biggest adventure was kayaking down Silver Springs where I went as a child with my parents and grandparents on a glass-bottom boat tour (a long time ago). This is now Florida’s oldest attraction. The original attraction had caged monkeys. The children of these monkeys live in the wild along Silver Springs River and now can be seen only from boats floating down the river.
…and did I mention ALLIGATORS??? That’s right. ALLIGATORS! It wasn’t until I posted pictures on Facebook of our adventures kayaking these rivers that someone asked… “Are you really in a blow-up kayak on a river filled with ALLIGATORS?”, that I realized what we had been doing! LOL!!! With 20/20 hindsight, I won’t do this again but we had a WONDERFUL time and luckily we were never challenged by the alligators.
We later gave these kayaks away to people who wanted to try out kayaking and we bought our current kayaks at Lake Tahoe, California about 6 months later.
We have been trying to get back to this region since we were there. We just can’t wait to do it all again!!!
This post is part of the #StateChallenge organized by @Kwiksatik and @Denise_Barlock. If you want to find out more, check out this post. You can also find other submissions by searching the #StateChallenge hashtag.
. I’m not a “water” guy despite being born and raised down here (I’m getting better at it, though!), so I’ve only kayaked in the Florida Keys (John Pennekamp is where I’ve kayaked the most) so I’d be intrigued and compelled to take exploring the nature around these rivers. And considering we’ve been pretty cooped up indoors, this seems like a great adventure.