Finishing January at Silver River

January 24-31, 2026                                                  Most Recent Posts
Silver Spring State Park site 5               FINALLY Paddling on the Silver River
Silver Springs Florida                                 Silver Springs Too Cold To Kayak

On January 25th  the farm in Virginia and Carrie in Maryland got another 8" of snow after snow and sleet the day before.  Here it was 85 degrees.

If you have not seen my previous blog it has most of my pictures from my days kayaking the Silver River.  I tried not to repeat myself too much so these last  two days on the river have fewer pictures.

Sunday January 25th

Every day I was lucky enough to see the manatee and have included them.  They are so wonderful.

Great Blue Heron makes a lovely reflection.

This was the only day I saw the Black Crowned Night Heron.  I was on the Fort King Trail near the head spring for the first time this year.  The trail used to have along the banks the fort and other buildings from a cracker town but they have been removed and it isn’t nearly as much fun to kayak  but the Night Heron made it more than worth doing.

If you’d like to see more pictures taken on the river, use the link on the right at the top of this page to my previous post.

I had gone out in the later afternoon on this day to avoid the crowds renting kayaks at the head spring.   When I got back it was within an hour of sundown.  I was walking the trail back to the campground when ahead of me were some monkeys.  

At first it look like only one or two and then 3 or 4.   I don’t like meeting monkeys on land.  They are wild animals.   Those of you who are long time followers may remember my encounter on the swamp trail a few years ago.

I stopped at a pretty good distance away so this is what my zoom lens could do.

It became clear that not just a few but the whole group was on both sides of me and ahead of me.  I didn’t want to go backwards toward the water so I tried to wait them out thinking they would move on.

But they were apparently quite happy here.  When it was getting close to sundown and more importantly close to the park closing time and they were showing no signs of moving on,  I thought I’d better call the ranger station before they closed so I didn’t get stuck out here in the dark

At first the phone went to voice mail and I thought OK now what.  But when I tried a second time with only 5 minutes to close someone answered and  sent a ranger on an ATV to rescue me.  Of course as soon as the troop heard the engine coming down the trail they disappeared and by the time he rounded the bend I was alone.   I hope he didn’t think I was crazy but as we left, I could see them coming out from the hammock on both sides of the trail behind us.

Monday January 26th

This turned out to be my last day on the river since I was leaving on Thursday  and the temperature dipped to 29 degrees for the next 3 nights, the rest of my stay.  This  meant disconnecting the water 3 nights in a row.   But I’m not complaining given the snow, sleet, ice and temps in the single digits at the farm.

Little Blue Heron giving me a look.

Doesn’t he look like he’s all tail?

Hope you think there are never too many manatee pictures.   I am so lucky and thrilled every time I see them.

Then when I got down to the ramp, there was the same or another troop of monkeys being ogled by folks in their boats at the dock’s edge.

I was actually glad for all the people for once since I was able to get my boat out of the water without any monkey business.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the temperatures of course were chillier so I did some trail hiking but I’ve posted those trails already in the post you can access from the second link at the right top of this page.

I also did some reading in both of my current books, one fiction and one non-fiction.

And did grocery store runs to Aldi’s and Publix.  

This was the temperature on Thursday morning ( IN FLORIDA) so I drug my feet packing up to leave.   But I had to be out by 1:00.  The  167 mile trip south to Oscar Scherer took me 3 1/2  hours including a stop for gas and the terrible traffic on I-75.

By the time I got there and set up it was nearing sundown and I was exhausted.

You can see an orange glow through the trees behind Winnona.

The moon was bright in the sky.

January closed itself out by raining all day so Pooh and I did some reading.

The next morning I was awakened by pecking on my bedroom windows.  It seems a mockingbird has seen his rival and is doing his best to scare him off.

Of course I’m not crazy about this as he can do some damage to the seals around the windows.   So I conferred with Pooh and his friend the Barn Owl who volunteered to try to be scary.

 

Pooh took the window at the head of my bed.

Owl took the one on the other side.

As I’m sure you know, they weren’t at all scary and the pecking continued.

I tried multiple times to get a video of him as he would start at dawn and wake me up if I wasn’t awake but as soon as I got my camera he would stretch out the times between his attacks.  

This video is the best I could get and the attacks are at the very beginning so be alert or let it run twice since it’s very short.  So aggravating that I gave up on him after he didn’t seem to be coming back and the second I turned the video off, there he was. Here’s the link to the stupid bird who kept this up for the entire two weeks I was at Oscar Scherer.

Or at least he was still at it when I returned from my trip to meet Carrie and Celia at Disneyworld.  That’s my next post.

FINALLY Paddling on the Silver River Part I

January 22 – 24, 2026                                                 Previous Posts:
Silver Springs State Park                          Silver Springs – Too Cold to Kayak
site #21                                                Back to Where It’s Warmer: 2026 Begins
Silver Springs Florida

Thursday January 22nd

Finally on Thursday  I was able to get out on the river.  In order to launch you have to have wheels for your kayak or someone to help you carry it the 1 mile to the launch.  I’m thrilled that the campground doesn’t rent kayaks anymore, they are only rented at the headspring now by an “outfitter”.  But the rack that used to hold the kayaks the campground rented is still near the launch so they allow you to lock your kayak up there rather than have to bring it down and take it back each time.  A total of 2 miles.  Or drive up to the headsprings and pay to launch up there.  Hat’s off to the manager of Silver Springs Campground.

Pulling it the mile DOWN to the river is not a problem if you first get it well balanced on the wheels.  If it isn’t balanced, it’s quite heavy and awkward to pull.  Still not a big problem going down to the the river but coming back up it is a bear.   Think about pulling 55 pounds up hill.   This, like so many other things, was not a problem when David and I could do it together.   It’s very tricky to do it alone.

Once it’s down there I can leave it locked up and go out every day which is exactly what I did once it got warm enough and wasn’t raining.

You can’t really tell from the launch but this is the lowest I’ve ever seen the Silver River.  The water is usually up to the top or over the top of the ramp but not this year which makes launching and especially getting out of the kayak much trickier.  A ranger I met on my way down said that the Spring has been degraded from the world’s larges flow to the 3rd largest due to all the development locally and the drought.  Too many straws dipping into the aquifer.  No one is at all concerned apparently as building permits continue on.  When will we admit we cannot keep allowing this uncontrolled cancerous growth.  You cannot drink or eat money.   End of rant.

Every day I saw manatee.  This one is sliding under my kayak on the left.  I’m sitting in the kayak taking this picture off to my left.  Beyond the manatee is the clear water and sand on the bottom.   This is a huge manatee.  Much wider than my boat.

Yes this is a line of turtles with a gator hugging one of them.  Gators do eat turtles but I didn’t stay around to see if that happened.

Two gators, a group of turtles and an anhinga.  Not sure why nobody seems terrified.

Handsome Mr Wood Duck giving me the eye.

And Mrs Wood Duck.  I think they are both gorgeous.

Little Blue Heron staring intently.

I love the cypress roots along the river bank but hate seeing the water so low that they are exposed so much.  If you look closely you can see the water lines on the trees.   The river appears to be four or more feet low.

Notice the hook on the Double Breasted Cormorant’s upper bill.    Here he has his mouth open to regulate his temperature.  If this were a video you could see the orange sides going in and out as he does something that looks like panting.

If you’ve ever heard a scream that sounds like someone being attacked, you may be hearing the call of a Limpkin.

An anhinga drying his wings on this giant cypress.   I took this video of another one sort of flapping his wings to get them dry.  I’d never been able to get this before.

Not sure if the Snowy Egret and the Little Blue Heron are pals or competitors.  Later on I watched a Snowy feeding for quite some time.  I find this fascinating.  Here is a video of it.  

Friday January 23rd

Friday January 23rd was my second day on the river in a row.  This is how I like it, several hours on the river every day.  I’m thrilled it’s not too cold.  I won’t repeat pictures of animals I’ve shown before unless it’s something different or interesting.

A tri-colored heron.   Notice the white stripe running down the under side of his neck.

This anhinga caught a fish that would look way too big for him to just swallow.  They don’t chew you know.

I don’t know my fish so I have no idea what this was but this video will show the fish more closely and hopefully someone can id it.   In this video it looks like he had the fish stuck on his bill and sure enough when I turned off the recording he threw it up in the air and down his throat it went.  I couldn’t get set up again in time to catch that which is what I’d been waiting for when the filming just seemed too long..   As you can see in the video, holding a camera still on a moving river is problematic.

Two manatee going down the river with me.

I would not recommend this going down a river with alligators  but a lot of people do it.

Silver Springs is famous for its glass bottomed boats.  They have been here since 1878 when Hullam Jones and Phillip Morrell created the original boat which was a modified rowboat with a pane of glass installed in the bottom, allowing tourists to view the springs' underwater life.   In the 1930’s larger motorized wooden boats were used and in the 1950’s the current aluminum boats replaced them.  Some of those 1950 boats are still in use.  I went on one in the mid 50’s.  Wish I could remember its name to see if it’s still being used.

The Green Heron is a favorite of mine.  Look closely at the art work on his wings.

I was pretty shocked that I could get this picture of the hyperactive kingfisher.  He zips back and forth across the river and seldom stays still long enough to even get him in your sights.

Doesn’t he look like he’s hugging some giant fish??   

A different gator swam down the river with me for quite a distance.   Here’s a video of how close he was and how fast he was going.   Sorry for the river rocking the camera some.  Zooming is a real trick on a moving river.  One I clearly haven’t mastered.

I prefer going out on the river first thing in the morning.  Lately it’s been too cold in the early morning, though it warms up enough to get out in the mid  afternoon.  BUT mid afternoon means a lot of people stop to have lunch at the campground ramp on their way down the river from the headspring.  

The only nice thing about all these people was that someone helped me get the kayak up on the ramp which is hard with the water so low.   I was taking this shot into the sun as I approached the ramp so it’s a bit difficult to see there are boats everywhere!

SATURDAY January 24th

Saturday is a day I almost never go paddling because of the crowds but since I’d missed out on an entire week I did go for my 3rd day in a row.  

This is the school dock which you saw from the land side at the end of the Swamp Trail in my previous blog.   It really looks like a jungle from the water.

I saw manatee every day and Day 3 on the water was no different.  Hope you can see both the ones in this photograph.  The reflection of the trees on the banks makes it difficult.

Look closely to see this juvenile alligator sitting on the fallen tree.  Compare his size to the gator hugging “the giant fish” a few photos above.

His coloring is very different from his parents.  They don’t turn solid gray until they are approximately 5 years old.

If he hadn’t been hammering away, I would never have seen this yellow bellied sapsucker on the cypress.

It was getting later in the afternoon on this day when a gator joined me and we paddled down the river together.

Here he is and this is how far away from the boat he was.  I videoed him as he swam with me.  Use this link to see him swimming along.

I was happily on the river for two more days but I fear I may have made your eyes glaze over with so many photos of my delightful hours.   So I’ll leave the last two river days for my next post which will finish out January.