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Up The
Lazy River... Photos and article by Eleanor S. Morris Clear crystal water, so quiet you can hear it, a still quiet broken only by the call of a pilliated woodpecker or the splash of a raccoon scooping up his fish dinner. Or perhaps the plop of an alligator slipping, sliding into the river. That's what it's like floating along on the waters of Central Florida. Three natural environment entertainment areas are almost shouting distance from Ocala and Tampa on the Gulf. But as you slip silently along on the clear waters and through the dense native flora of Silver Springs, the Hillsborough River or Weeki Wachee Spring, the big cities seem eons away. SILVER SPRINGS In 1925 the United States
Department of the Interior designated Silver Springs as a Registered National
Landmark. Today you'll find that Silver Springs has all the trappings
of a summer fun place like glass bottom boats, a "jungle" boat
ride to spot exotic animals (like howling monkeys swinging in the trees
along the river banks), jeep safari rides and a chance to drape a snake
But more than this, Silver Springs is committed to the preservation and conservation of this land and the environment in educational, breeding and rehabilitation programs. Otherwise, all this might be lost: At dawn along the silvery waters of Silver Springs, black cormorants are silhouetted high on the branches of sweet ash, maple and cypress trees. Egrets, herons, water turkeys and white ibis wait for the coming of the sun. Hidden are banded water snakes, moccasins, alligators and raccoons, who will soon be up and ready to fish for breakfast. Otters poke their heads up, looking for a tasty morsel of live fish, but the trout elude them with high leaps above the surface of the water. The springs, 81 feet deep, are clear all the way down, down, down, for seven miles. Eleven of them pour forth more than 550 million gallons of fresh water every day. In this water-threaded jungle, the Tarzan films of the 30s and 40s were filmed, and you wouldn't be surprised at all to see Cheetah come swinging out of the dense underbrush at any moment. HILLSBOROUGH RIVER The Hillsborough river, providing most of Tampa's drinking water, is not only a treasure for naturalists, hikers, birders and avid canoers. It's also a relaxing get- away for just folks looking for a day of fun in the outdoors. Canoeing on the Hillsborough
River is an adventure in Hillsborough County's Wilderness Park System.
Some 20 miles of the river are within the Hillsborough Park site, providing
access to some 16,000 acres of wilderness area. Canoers can paddle for hours along the five tributaries of the river, Blackwater Creek, Flint Creek, New River, Trout Creek and Cypress Creek, and never meet another soul. On the river, surrounded by the dense forest, there's no horizon, no line where water and air meet. As the long limbs of cypress branch repeat upside down, reflecting in the water, it becomes mesmerizing, a floating in another dimension. There are alligators in the wild--but they're only dangerous if they've been fed by tourists. "Then they'll eat YOU if you offer nothing else," says Joe Faulk, guide, himself an escapee from the corporate world. "If I suspect a little `gator is slowly swimming toward me because he's been fed and has gotten lazy about catching his own dinner, I have a little test. I toss a can out and if he swims toward it I know he's been fed, he's expecting it to be food and we have the Fish and Game come take `em out." Joe points out a brown water snake, a green back heron and a red shoulder hawk. Also a brown limpkin, an endangered bird. He points out fly fish, brim, speckled perch, red breast and stump bushers, "local names," he says. The pretty purple pickerel weed is not a problem, but in some places in the river the water hyacinths are so thick and the river is so narrow it's hard to paddle through. "It'll totally choke a river," Joe says. "We clear just enough of it for canoes to pass through," adding that it's a native of South America. WEEKI WACHEE SPRING Weeki Wachee Spring north
of Tampa, has joined its sister entertainment park, Silver Springs, in
offering a formal education program for the preservation and conservation
of Florida's natural attractions. The spring is the surfacing point of
the Weeki Wachee River, and it's so deep divers have not yet located the
bottom. Measuring 100 feet across, the spring has been explored to depths
of 150 feet and probed to 400 feet of passage. Every 24 hours 170 gallons
of 99.8 percent pure water is pushed to the surface. As an all-round entertainment
park, Weeki Wachee Spring offers 200 acres of attractions, focusing on
the natural beauty of the waterways and the flora and fauna of the interior
of the state.
Copyright Eleanor S.
Morris
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Lovetripper.com Romantic Travel Guide
around
your neck or feed a big-mouthed giraffe.
