Last nights storm had disappeared by this morning, although it was cooler it was back to being sunny. We travelled about 30 miles east to Silver Springs. This is a nature park located at the head of the the Silver River. This river is formed by a series of underground springs, the largest of which produces 550 million gallons of water per day, evidently enough to keep New York city supplied for 24 hours. The water is crystal clear and is consistently 22C year round.
We took a glass bottom boat tour around the springs to see the fish that live in the area, in general the depth was around 15 -25 ft and it was no problem to see the bottom. The park has been used as a location for many underwater scenes in movies due top the waters clarity.
Along the shore were numerous alligators and turtles as well as an assortment of bird life.
There were two other boat tours in the park that took us through some of the backwaters showing what life was like in the late 1800’s when the area was settled.
The park also had a number of exhibits for wild life, mostly animals native to Florida, but somehow a couple of giraffe slipped into the mix. Probably the most impressive animal there was the Kodiak bear, although not native to Florida, it is a North American bear that is found only on Kodiak Island which is up around the Aleutian chain of islands. This bear was massive, I used to think Black and Brown bear were large, but there were a couple of them next door to the Kodiak, and they were dwarfed by him.
KODIAK BEAR – Needs a manicure!