Silver River

We got lucky this weekend and didn’t have softball or T-Ball games, so we decided to take the boat out again.

This time, we tried the Silver River in Ocala. We’d heard the water was beautiful and you could see the monkeys (that had gotten loose from Silver Springs over the years and mated and made quite a population of wild monkeys that live in the woods on the river).

This time Pappy (Nie-Nie was out of town) went with us… again, a good thing, since I’m still not 100% comfortable with all the loading and unloading of the boat yet. Ha.

The river is really narrow, but very pretty. Lots of people were paddling it in kayaks and canoes, but there were quite a bit of boats, too.

We kept looking for the monkeys, and finally saw one, but that was it.

The water is clear and beautiful but there weren’t any spots to really stop and anchor so you could picnic or swim. We kept waiting for a spot and before we knew it we’d reached the end, which is at the old Silver Springs (now the Silver Springs state park). It was crazy that we could drive the boat right in the park, over the springs, where the glass bottom boats go. We were just at Silver Springs in February so it was neat for the girls.

Pappy had a disposable underwater camera in his dive bag left over from a recent trip when he’d forgotten his real underwater camera, and Mamie was super impressed with it. He let her take pictures with it, but she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see the pictures. It’s crazy how far technology has come, that kids today don’t even know what film is or understand “getting it developed.”

On our way back down we decided to just let the boat float down and swim along with it.

Halfway back down the river, we passed a group of kayakers who told us to be on the lookout for a large group of monkeys up ahead. I was so excited we finally got to see some! It was crazy because once you spotted one, you’d start seeing tons of other ones. They are so camouflaged that I wondered how many we had probably missed on the way up. This face scared me and made me real glad we weren’t any closer to him than we were. ;)

It was a fun trip and I’m glad we’ve marked a new river off our list. We’ve heard good things about Salt Springs over that way, too, and we’re hoping to check it out this summer.

~amw~