Blue Spring

Here another homage to one of my multiple second homes: Florida. The sunshine state is most known for its long sandy beaches, its never-ending summer and its spring break parties. But the state has a lot more to offer and is the home of many beautiful places that are not that well known. During my exchange year in Central Florida I had the chance to discover many of those hidden places. One of them is definitely the Blue Springs, about one hour away from Orlando. Blue Springs is a State Park, and belongs to the St. John’s River.

Florida is pretty much just a big floating plate on the Atlantic Ocean. Next to multiple lakes, sinkholes and caves, Florida is also home of numerous fresh water springs. Many of them have been turned into tourist destinations as you can go kayaking, swimming, diving and watching wildlife there. Florida has more than 700 springs, of which most are situated in the north of the interstate highway in Central Florida. As here is the Florida Asquifer, a limestone formation under the earth through which the springs bubble up.

Blue Spring is one of the most famous springs in Florida and the biggest on the St. John’s River. A specialty about the spring is that it is a Manatee Refugee, where especially from November till March several hundreds of Manatees come to spend their winter in the mild water. When I visited the spring in January we got the chance to see numerous of the big mammals. The manatees get up to 4 meters long and over 500 kilograms heavy and are very impressive to see, especially at the Blue Spring where there are many viewpoints directly over the water surface, giving you a great and close lookon the cute animals.

Also the Blue Spring is a popular diving destination as it hides a massive cave. Divers from the whole world come here to dive down the 20 meter tunnel into the huge underwater cave. Every summer thousands of people visit the springs to cool off from the hot Florida air and enjoy a nice day swimming and floating in the spring. During the manatee season swimming is although prohibited to protect the animals.

Next to the manatees and the underwater cave the Blue Spring itself is a very scenery and beautiful place. The water is so incredibly clear that you can see ever little detail on the bottom. In summer the water glows in bright turquoise while in winter it is more greenish. Also the flora and fauna around the spring is beautiful, the oaks tree hanging leaning over the water create a scenery image. Also you can discover other animalsin and outside of the spring. When I visited we for example saw, next to the multiple manatees, an armadillo in the woods just next to the spring and inside of the water we could catch a glimpse of two alligators and see tons of quite big fishes swimming around.

In summer like in winter, the Blue Spring State Park in Florida is a great place to enjoy nature, watch wildlife from up close or take a bath. If you ever visit Florida, make sure to check out one of the numerous springs, as they really are something that doesn’t exist this way in Europe and are definitely worth a daytrip.