The land of springs

---

Today, I explore one the most celebrated parts of Florida within the state, and unknown parts outside of it, natural springs.

The entire upper half of the Florida peninsula sits on a thick layer of limestone.

This limestone has eroded to form caves.

Rainfall filters through the ground into the caves, forming a huge aquifer called the karsts layer.

When a cave reaches the surface, the water flows out forming a spring.

Florida spring water is a constant temperature year round, and some of the purest fresh water on earth.

King's Bay

My first encounter with the springs was a snorkel trip in King’s Bay, one of the most important regions of the state for aquatic wildlife.

King’s Bay is created by dozens of freshwater springs.

It is connected to the Gulf of Mexico by an estuary called the Crystal River.

In the winter when the Gulf becomes cold, animals migrate to the warmer water of King’s Bay.

In the summer they return to the Gulf.

Snorkeling in the Bay at the right time of year produces wildlife by the dozens.

The manatees get the publicity, but there are also dozens of types of fish and birds.




Whatever one may imagine, a trip in the bay is not a wilderness experience.

To protect the Bay, the Fish and Wildlife Service strictly regulates swimming and manatee watching.

It needs to be done within designated areas, all of which have big warning signs about proper etiquette.

One even has a floating barge with an exhibit on manatee behavior.

People get to the swimming areas on boats.

They can either rent one, or join an organized tour.

The tours range from barebones outfits that simply rent gear and haul people out there to luxury outfits with naturalists to explain what will be seen.

Given my budget, I chose the barebones Crystal Lodge Diver Center, and this was a very good idea.




The trip went to several springs.

The most important were King’s Spring and Three Sisters.

At all stops, the boat floated at the entrance to the swimming area and we could then snorkel at our leisure.

Three Sisters is located at the end of a side channel.

It has astonishingly clear water since it is separated from the bay proper.

The bottom is composed entirely of white sand.

King’s Spring is in the middle of the Bay.

The rocks around the spring are close enough to the surface to stand on, although one needs to be careful of the drop off (and the rocks are slippery).

For wildlife, I timed this part of the trip really wrong.

March has been an unusually warm month in Florida, so most animals had already left the Bay.

I saw a school of zebra fish, and that was about it.

Crystal River State Park

After my swim, I went to one of Florida’s most important archeological sites.

In 400 BC, a tribe of Indians now called the Deptford Culture first occupied a peninsula in the Crystal River.

They stayed there for almost two thousand years, and created a rather elaborate complex.

It was rediscovered in the early 1900s, and is now Crystal River State Park.




The area first looks like a bunch of mounds with trees here and there.

Once one knows the history they become highly evocative.

That history is told in the visitor's center.

It has displays of artifacts found during various digs, and how those artifacts illustrate changing society and technology.

The group was pretty primitive, but had wide-raging trade routes.

Copper that could only come from the Ohio valley was found in several mounds, and other artifacts signify religious practices that originated in Mexico.




The mounds themselves fall in three categories.

Oldest are the burial mounds.

These are the gravesites of tribal members.

The original mound grew too large, so satellite mounds were added.

They form a rough circle.

Second are the temple mounds.

There are two of them, which a large plaza in between.

The smaller of the two is almost perfectly preserved, with a ramp leading up to the top.

The larger one is located at the very end of the peninsula.

The ramp for this one was removed in the 1960s, the same time that the bay next to the peninsula was filled in.

The mound has eroded enough that it’s easy to see that it was built of dirt, rocks, and seashells.

The seashells are the obvious indicator that the mound was man-made.

The final set of mounds are trash mounds.

The settlement generated refuse just like modern towns, and it was piled into mounds.

These mounds are furthest from the river.




The most significant items in the complex from an archeological point of view are the two stelae.

They are two flat rocks which were roughly carved.

One end was then stuck in the ground to form an altar.

Their significance is that they were used in religious ceremonies, and those ceremonies originated in what is now Mexico.

Excavations there have revealed similar stones.

Here, one of them has the outline of a human face.

Remains of items used as offerings have been found next to both of them.




The exact use of the site will never be known, because the Indians did not have a written language.

By the time Europeans arrived they were long gone.

Their descendents merged with other area tribes and ultimately became part of the Seminoles.

Weeki Wachee Mermaids

The next site for the day is one of Florida’s most loved instances of roadside kitsch, Weeki Wachee Springs.

Just after World War II, Navy diver Newton Perry invented a way of breathing underwater through air hoses.

He then had the brainwave of using this technique to create live mermaids.

Young women would wear tail costumes and use the hoses to swim underwater in a Florida spring.

He bought the natural Weeki Wachee Springs soon afterward, built an underground theater with glass walls, and opened his mermaid show.

Sixty years later, it’s still going.

The mermaids now do synchronized underwater swimming, and lip-sync to music like “We’ve got the world by the tail”.

They don’t hide the fact they are breathing through hoses periodically, but they don’t call attention to it either.

The illusion is fairly effective, and the athleticism is impressive.

Be warned that most of the songs are cheesy enough to make sandwiches for a month (which is part of the charm by this point).




I spent the night at yet another spring, Rainbow Springs State Park.

The camping area is located a ways back from the actual spring, in an open field.

It has even less privacy than Myakka River.

On the plus side, I was finally far enough from big cities that the stars came out fully.

Driving my car on nights like this is a little dangerous, since all I wanted to do was look up.

I also discovered why natives call the mosquito the unofficial state bird of Florida; they attacked in droves, and soaking myself in bug spray only slowed them down.

---

Photos

Weeki Wachee Mermaid
Up close with a live mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs.

Burial Mound at Crystal River State Park
One of several semi-circular burial mounds at Crystal River State Park in Florida. The mounds were made over a thousand years ago.

Main Temple Mound
The main temple mound at Crystal River State Park. I took the photo from the top of the mound

The human face stela
The famous stela with a human face carving at Crystal River State Park. Remains of offerings were found at its base.

Mermaid ballet
Swim ballet by the Weeki Wachee mermads. Note the air hoses on the rock in the background.

Mermaids meet human
A human diver encounters the mermaids. Look closely to see the air hoses for breathing

Land mermaid
Patron meets a mermaid after the show