The two horses in the pasture next to our loft above the barn came over to say good-bye as we packed up and headed off from Fairhope. It was a pretty uneventful and uninteresting drive to Wakulla Springs. The inland portion of the Florida panhandle is flat and fairly barren – stands of pines being about the only scenic views along the way. As we got closer to Wakulla Springs there was a lot more vegetation, almost jungle-like – more on that later.
Wakulla Springs is a Florida state park on land that was donated by Edwin Ball who had purchased the land in the 1930’s as a wildlife preserve with a hotel. The hotel is still open and is furnished and run much as it was when it opened (no TVs, an elevator that you open the doors by hand, etc.) We are staying here for 2 nights.
We’re planning to bike on a nearby trail tomorrow, so when we saw that the last boat tour of the day left at 5:00 (and we were checking in after 4:00) we quickly brought our bags into the room and headed to the boat dock to get tickets for the last tour.
The boat goes about a mile downstream on the Wakulla River and then returns. The boat driver and narrator has been doing this since the 1980’s, so he knows a few of the alligators by name and he spotted and pointed out many different birds and had some information about all of them.
He stopped the engines on several occasions and people were generally very quiet. You could hear the sounds of the jungle and the gently flowing river.
The river runs at a constant 3 miles an hour because that is the rate at which the Wakulla Springs is emitting to create the river. (Fun fact of the day.)
Because it was a nice hotel immediately adjacent to a jungle-like area with a river, a deep spring and some swampy areas, it was the sight of filming for several “Tarzan of the Jungle” movies and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” in the 1940’s and 1950’s.
That’s Tom’s very nice take on Wakulla Springs. Here’s what I saw:
Thank god the sides on that boat were pretty high! I was really enjoying the scenery on the cruise.
And then we started to see these guys in the trees and circling overhead.
I’m pretty sure they have cut a deal with the alligators. I’m keeping close watch.
Thursday we took a ride on the Talahassee to St. Marks rail trail.
Nice shady trail with restrooms and easy street crossings. The shade was good as the temperature was climbing into the 20s. Nice to be out riding in short sleeves!
There was a long wall painted with holiday greetings right before we got to St. Marks. My favorite bit was the fishing snowman. They probably don’t get a lot of snowmen here and just assume that everyone likes to fish!
There was also a strange little park across from the wall with a freshly mulched circular path and a bizarre statue. As we stood there puzzling over what it was for, we saw this little sign:
Total of 19 miles on our half bikes. We are gradually building up the distance and going forward we’ll have even more ride time than originally planned.
Given coronavirus developments we spent the afternoon tweaking our plan to eliminate pretty much all of the hotels, spring training and the Kennedy Space Center. Later saw that MLB finally cancelled the games so at least we’ll get a refund.
AirBnB stays work pretty well for social distancing as we can eat all of our meals in and pack picnics to take on the rides. We’ve added a bunch of trails to ride and hopefully will be able to carry through with this plan. Florida has a really impressive number of long rail trails so we’ll still have plenty of fun.
After our last hotel (and probably restaurant) meal of the trip we took a walk around the grounds which were still blanketed with fog. The vultures were out in the trees and also on the diving dock in the swimming area in the springs (another fun fact, since they are constantly being fed from underground aquifers the temperature in the water is 68 degrees year round).
