May 9-12, 2017 Tuesday – Friday
Silver Glen Springs is truly awesome when it is not overly crowded. During our visit, there were small crowds during the day and at night only a few boats remained. Tuesday we took the dinghy down the channel to check water depths and enjoy the scenery. Knowing the true depths of the channel, we were much more comfortable on our Thursday departure. It was interesting to observe the different types of fish and to see blue crab and turtles crawling on the bottom.
Later we kayaked up a swamp, there the water sported a layer of green slime. We saw alligators, turtles, deer, butterflies. and a variety of birds; we heard even more.
Of course, not everyone agrees with us, in the summer many visitors come to socialize, and they love the crowds. Surfing the web, I found several pictures and YouTube videos showing the summer party life, I’m happy they are having fun, but even more happy that it was not like that during our visit. The max number of boats we saw at one time was about ten and that was only during the day, at night it mostly belonged to us.
Friday we hiked the Boil Springs (aka. Jody’s Springs) and Lake George trails. Naturalist Archie Carr said of Boil Springs, “There is no one big, river-making outpouring, but instead a scattering of gentle little geysers of crystal water and snowy sand bubbling in the bottom of a shallow pool surrounded by the evergreen hammock. Some of the boils are no bigger than your fist, some are the size of a washtub.”
Boils Springs was depicted as Jody’s Spring by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in her opening chapter of The Yearling.
Silver Glen Springs
Jody’s Springs
Fishin’ at the Glen
Thursday morning we went for our morning swim, let the fish entertain us while we had our tea, weighed anchor, and headed back downriver. Part of the entertainment was the jumping mullet, we saw hundreds while at the Glen but never did get a decent picture. They would jump 3 to 5 feet in the air, splash down and repeat the jump 2 or 3 times.
Morning Entertainment
Saint Johns River, the longest river in Florida, is 248 miles long and goes through a several lakes, one of which is Lake George, the second largest lake in Florida. The river flows from Sanford, FL, north through Jacksonville, and east to Mayport on the Atlantic Ocean. If you are going to do a side trip on the St. Johns, without hauling your boat, you must enter and return from the ICW, travel upriver and then return back north. Therefore, we retraced our float plan and started back down river (North?) to Ortega Landing. On our way, we took a detour on Murphy Creek hoping to find an anchorage away from Palatka, aka midges. We were somewhat successful that evening, however as we motored through Palatka the next morning, thousands of them hitched a ride on Andiamo.
Murphy Creek