Fanning Springs, Clear and Dark

The main draw for our vacation destinations in Florida are the first magnitude springs that we enjoy. We love to go swimming, snorkeling, canoeing, and wildlife viewing at these amazing places. Our next trip will feature visits to several springs that we either have never seen, or haven't been to for a long time.

Here are some photos of Fanning Springs which we saw two years ago on one of our vacations. Despite the differences, both photos are of the same place. One was taken with the spring clear. The second was a couple of days later when the spring went "dark". That is, the Suwanee River rose high enough so that its darker waters flooded out the spring.


The spring clear (but if you notice, the river is quite high just beyond the spring run).

This was two days later when floodwaters had raised the Suwanee so that it completely inundated Fanning Spring (and every other spring in the area).

Florida Trees

Trees: Their House, Your House.

The southern cedar, representative tree of the barrier islands along the Gulf. We saw a lot of these trees. Initially, this was the reason these islands were settled--the virgin cedar forests were cut and the ecosystem gutted, along with employment. When the timber companies finished removing the cedar forests, they abandoned the people they'd previously employed.

On my trips, even though my knowledge of trees is highly limited, I'm always on the lookout for very large or unusual trees and plants. I found a few such flora on this latest trip. I did manage to locate a couple of pretty big darned cypress trees. One of them was between the headsprings at Manatee Springs and the inlet of the run along the Suwaneee River. This was the first day we arrived at the park before the flood waters reached the area and river current became too fierce and too filled with flood debris to make canoeing a safe bet.

A nice bald cypress along the Manatee Springs Run.

I talked Carole into letting me beach the canoe in the swamp so that I could pick my way to the base of the big cypress where she was able to take my photo. I'm not sure, but I suspect this particular cypress was hollow, since all of the other cypress trees in the area were nondescript and the only reason this one wouldn't have been felled would be that it was hollow and the timber company allowed it to stand.

Not sure what this is. But it makes for a colorful photograph.

A couple of days later I found another large cypress inside the Fannings Spring State Park. It had been surrounded by water from the rising river, so I wasn't able to walk right down to it as I could have if I'd found it earlier. However, I climbed over the boardwalk trail (much to Carole's dismay) and she was able to take a good shot of me before the big cypress.

Wish I'd found this one a couple of days earlier before the flood waters started rolling in.

On another day we took a hike through the San Felasco Hammock State Park and that was a rewarding trip. But just in the fact that we were able to take a 2.5 mile hike through a mature hardwood forest. The park claims to have some champion caliber trees, but I didn't see anything that looked like more than your average second growth hardwood groves. Still, it was a good day to be out and about with cool temperatures and a nice breeze. The bugs were kept to a minimum. Later we visited Cedar Key State Park and I saw a Sand pine, a species I'd never encountered.
A Sand pine. These live only in limited areas along the Gulf coast of Florida and a tiny bit of coastal Alabama. They require sandy, well-drained soils. They're a very rare tree.

The Powerful Flood

Mother Nature almost succeeded in sinking this vacation for us. First, there were torrential rains just before we left that fell over southern Georgia and northern Florida. This water ended up inundating the various river systems, slowly working its way downstream and flooding the lowlands. Fortunately for us, it took a few days to reach the campground we were using at Manatee Springs State Park. In addition to the rain, it got unbelievably cold for this part of Florida at this time of the year. One night the temperature reached freezing! No swimming for us that day!

One of the more unfortunate results of the flooding was that all of the first magnitude springs along the Suwanee River ended up "going dark". That is the river level rose above that of the head springs so that all of the beautiful, fresh, clear waters were overtaken and blotted out by the tannin-rich waters of the Suwanee. Alas!

But we enjoyed the springs while we could. Manatee was still high enough above the level of the Suwanee so that it remained clear the whole of our time there. However, after we left, the river did overtop the spring and the park was closed until the flooding ends. As I write this, the park will be closed for at least a few more weeks.

Fanning Springs the day we arrived in the vicinity. Clear and beautiful.

A few days later, the Suwanee River inundated it and turned it dark.