April 5, 2012 - St Johns River - Continued

We anchored a second night at Blue Spring State Park’s Hontoon Island Oxbow, so we could explore by dinghy. Our first stop is Blue Spring, a beautiful fresh water spring with a consistent temperature of 72 degrees year round. This makes conditions ideal for West Indian manatees in cold weather, when the St. Johns River may be colder than the spring. More than 200 manatees gather here in winter, and the manatee seems to be the official mascot of the park.

We landed the dinghy under the watchful eye of a local marine sheriff, who greeted us politely and verified that our dinghy complied with waterway regulations. Then we set off on the 1/3 mile boardwalk through a shady hardwood hammock.

The area was settled by Louis Thursby, who built this three-story house in 1872. He, his wife and several children lived here, with fresh water from the nearby spring, and farmed citrus and other crops. It was a hard life, as they lost several children in infancy and adolescence, including a son who suffered a fatal rattlesnake bite while playing under the house.

The house was built on top of a large Indian midden, or shell mound, and the porch still serves its purpose.

The 2,643 acre park includes some spectacular tree specimens.

Visitors may swim in the spring, and can rent rafts and snorkel gear. The clear spring run displays many types of fish; we saw great schools of gar.

The head or source of the spring, termed “the boil” when discovered, discharges 104 million gallons of water daily.

After completing our tour of the park, we returned to the dinghy for more of our jungle cruise.

We saw many pairs of eyes in the water, showing us where the alligators lurked.

Some areas looked non-navigable until we tried them, and we had to make sure we remembered how we got there – and how to get back!

The banks were lined with dead….

…and living cypress.

At anchor that night, the sounds of the jungle kept us awake – including the deranged bass and tenors of frogs (sounding like a Bahamian “rake and scrape” gone awry), grunts, bleating, honking, rustling in the bushes, owls hooting – ah, nature!