A Road Trip Through Northern Florida

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It had been a long time since I had taken more than a few days off to explore the area around my home. When I was young my family vacations were always road trips. We would visit Florida, and Tennessee, and occasionally we would drive up the east coast through Virginia and Ohio to see family, once we even drove through New York to Canada to see Niagara Falls. Those trips were always a lot of fun and very educational. In my adult life, road trips had not played a big part of my travel plans. Despite all of the traveling I had done and my love of the journey, I had fallen into the trap that is so common in America with our short vacations. Most of our recent local travel plans involved short weekend trips to the beach or mountains. To maximize our time at the destination we would stick to the interstates and drive straight through with the minimum number of stops. After traveling like that for a few years we did a few experimental weekend trips where we got off of the interstates a bit and stopped at some of the mysterious places along the way to hike, or to paddle through interesting little waterways. We found that we could fit a lot of amazing things into a short trip that way. Our hybrid weekend road trips were more rewarding than the quick non-stop drives that had been our norm. There were a lot of interesting places that were close to home, but way out of the realm of a comfortable weekend trip. We decided to string together several of those interesting places into a big loop and see several of them and what ever else we found in one push. It was time to bring the road trip vacation back into our lives.



We started our weeklong journey on St. Simons Island, one of Georgia’s beautiful barrier islands, where Maria was attending a conference. We were staying at the King and Prince hotel, St. Simons’ premier historic hotel. The hotel was a large property right on the beach with turrets and lovely architectural detailing on the old part of the property. We walked into the massive lobby atrium of the historic building and I immediately fell in love with the grandeur of the place. There were columns and arches and lots of plants. Some of the arched windows that faced the beach even had stained glass scenes built into the transoms. We spent our first night in the historic building with a window that looked out on the ocean and then we moved to the oceanfront rooms when the conference started.



I spent my days swimming in the ocean and exploring the hidden nooks and crannies of the hotel. In the evenings Maria and I would go into town to try out some of the excellent restaurants or browse the small shops downtown. One night we found a bluegrass performance in the park beside the lighthouse and we sat under the Spanish moss and enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze. The most exciting part of my time on St. Simons came during a raging storm that rolled through one morning. I spent over an hour playing in the big waves as the sheets of rain poured down around me. At times the rain was so heavy that I could hardly see the hotel through the deluge. I headed back to the hotel soaking wet and feeling very alive.



The conference ended on Wednesday morning. We said farewell to St. Simons and we set our sights on Florida. After a few hours of driving we arrived in St. Augustine. We found a Bed and Breakfast in the heart of the tourist section, where we dropped our bags and set off to explore. St. Augustine was a town that I had always wanted to see. I had been to the Spanish fortress years before on one of those wonderful family road trips, but I had not seen the city then. We lost ourselves in the shops and cafes and we took in all that we could see. We explored the massive Casa Monica, a magnificent historic hotel in the heart of the town, and we marveled at the lovely architecture of the sprawling Flagler College. We split up for a while and I went to explore the wonderfully kitschy pirate museum. Afterward we met back up and went to a nice coffee shop in a tiny old building. We spent a lot of time exploring the colonial quarter along St. George Street and we strolled along the waterfront to the massive Spanish fortress at sunset. After dark we found an interesting piano bar where we let the piano man serenade us over dinner and then we called it an evening.



The following morning started with a wonderful breakfast at the B&B and then we set off again without any destination in mind. We ended up walking through a sleepy neighborhood filled with Spanish moss draped trees, stunning Victorian mansions and an ornate stone church – It was an amazing neighborhood. We loved Saint Augustine and we knew it was a place we would be coming back to, but after less than a day there it was time to move on. We had a lot of ground to cover that day, so we put America’s oldest city behind us and drove off into the unknown.



We drove north out of the city and retraced our route to Jacksonville. From there we turned west. We got off of the main road at Lake City where we ate lunch and then we followed the back roads south. We reached the turnoff for Ichetucknee Springs State Park a short time later. The park was named after the crystal clear spring that bubbled up in the park and flowed out in the stunning Ichetucknee River. We had read amazing things about the park. One thing in particular had caught our eyes. Tubing down the crystal clear river was listed as one of the must do activities in Northern Florida and it sounded wonderful. The ranger at the park entrance sent us back out of the park and down the road to a business just outside of the park that rented tubes. About half an hour later we were back with a massive two-person tube tied to the roof of the car. The ranger directed us to a large parking area designated for tubing and we set off, our excitement building.



The guidebook told us to prepare for long lines and lots of people. However, there were only a few cars in the lot and there wasn’t a person in sight. It seemed that we had chosen the very best time to come. We dragged our large tube to the designated spot and a man appeared with a tractor. He helped us throw the tube into a trailer and then we took a seat in one of several empty trailers that the tractor was pulling and we headed off through the forest. A few minutes later the ride came to an end at a turnaround in the forest and the man pointed toward a trail and said that the tubing started a little ways down the path. He explained the dos and don’ts of tubing in the park and he told us that we couldn’t miss the take-out point. He then added that we shouldn’t miss the take-out point, because the water got warmer the further from the spring we went and that the gators loved the warmer water. We thanked the man and set off through the forest with our tube. The terrain was beautiful and the path was wide and well trampled. We turned down a slope and entered the flat, swampy terrain of the river floodplain. Eventually the walkway ended at a floating dock on the gorgeous river. Mist rose from the clear water as it flowed around the wide buttresses of the cypress trees, yet everything seemed so still. We had taken our time getting to the river, so another group had appeared behind us. Not wanting to be followed the whole way down the river we let them go first. After they had rounded a far bend and were out of sight we put the tube in the water, climbed aboard, and set off on our swampy river adventure.



We were floating through a magnificent landscape of cypress trees and Spanish moss. The heavy branches of the trees reached out over the water forming a lush canopy that kept us in shade, or dappled in sunlight. We sat in our tube and let the gentle current carry us were ever it wanted. The crystal clear water had a slight green tint to it, though I wasn’t sure if it was due to the thick green grass that grew on the riverbed, or from tannins flowing from the swampy forest around the river. We spent a lot of time hanging out over the edge of the tube with our mask and snorkel on watching the fish and the turtles swim past, occasionally having to dodge submerged trees and rocks that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Some of the fallen trees were completely hidden beneath the surface and others rose up out of the water like bleached skeletons of ancient giants. The thick branches or trunks that were roughly level with the surface provided sunning spots for the large turtles that called the river home. We passed several massive, algae covered turtles and they didn’t really pay us any attention except when the current brought us a little too close. It was almost like a game. I would point the camera at the approaching turtle and wait for a close-up shot. Sometimes I would get the shot I hoped for and other times they would slide off of their perch and disappear beneath the tube just before I activated the shutter. We floated through the grand riverine ecosystem for about an hour. We frequently found ourselves stuck in a logjam, or getting perilously close to the overgrown bank, but, for the most part, we floated at a constant pace. About the time we were starting to wonder if we had missed the last take-out point we discovered what the man had meant when he said we couldn’t miss it. There was a huge line of buoys that led to a scoop-like dock that we floated to with ease and came to a stop. We sat in the water for a few minutes more and then we said farewell to the wonderful Itchetucknee River and headed back to the waiting tram and our car.



We spent the rest of the day driving west along a straight two-lane road through pine forests and open grasslands. Our destination was an exciting piece of wilderness near the Gulf of Mexico called Wakulla Springs State Park. We reached the turnoff for the springs a few hours before dark. The drive into the park was on a narrow road that wound its way through a thick forest of oak, beech, and cypress. The road ended in a parking area beside a magnificent lodge that had been operating at the edge of the spring since 1937. We gathered our things and headed for the lodge, which would be our home for the next few nights. We entered the grand lobby through an arched doorway at the end of a landscaped walkway between the hotel’s two wings. The lobby was amazing. It was a massive room with marble floors and arched windows and doorways. The centerpiece of the room was a huge stone fireplace that was flanked by a series of arched windows and doorways and the reception desk. The high ceiling spanned the entire lobby without the use of columns. The long cypress beams were intricately detailed with nice trim and ornate painted patterns reflecting scenes from the spring. There were several glamorous seating areas, a piano, and some slightly out of place, but quirky, backlit signs that had been built into the walls during the lodge’s heyday that showed scenes from the early days of tourism at the springs – There was even a massive stuffed alligator in a display case that had once been the largest gator at the spring. Everything about the lobby told of the opulence of days gone by.



We pried our eyes away from the grandeur and went to the reception desk. The man at the counter was polite and quickly got us checked into our room. He directed us around the corner to an ancient elevator for our ride up to the second floor. The elevator was a fun experience. It was tiny and built with the same ornate details and materials that the rest of the hotel had been built with, suggesting that it was the original elevator. We walked in and slid the safety gate closed, pushed the old button and then the elevator lurched up to the second floor – I had never been in an old elevator that had retained the safety cage, though I had seen them in the movies! We quickly found our room in the section of the hotel that had originally been the private suites of the lodge’s founder, Edward Ball. The room was ornate and beautifully detailed with antique furniture and lots of marble. Despite the beauty of the room, the windows looked out on the parking area and the courtyard entrance, so we decided to ask and see if there were any rooms available that looked out on the springs. After a trip back down to the lobby we had a new room that was less ornate, though still detailed in marble, and the view was grand.



We spent about an hour walking around the grounds. The spring itself was already closed for the day, so we contented ourselves with looking out over the misty water from the fence. We were excited to explore more, but as darkness set in we decided dinner would be a better use of our time. We went to the opulent, but faded, dining room in the lodge where we enjoyed a wonderful meal and then we headed up to the room to relax for a while.



Wakulla Springs was famous for a lot of reasons. It was the largest and deepest freshwater spring in the world according to the literature that I read in the lobby. It was also home to an abundant population of wildlife including alligators, manatees, and countless bird species. I was interested in all of that, but the thing that made Wakulla Springs stand out above the other amazing springs in the area was an odd distinction – Parts of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a movie that had terrified me as a child, were filmed there back in 1953. One of the lodge’s best selling points for us was that there were no televisions in the rooms. The only public television in the whole lodge was located in the lobby and it stayed off except for the nightly showing of the movie that had made it famous. An hour or so after dinner, I found myself sitting in front of the TV in the lobby with the company of the stuffed alligator named Old Joe. Watching television was not a usual activity for me, but I had not seen The Creature From the Black Lagoon since those terror filled moments in my childhood and I felt like the time and the setting was right. I was whisked away to the Amazon Rainforest and the heroic age of exploration. The Black Lagoon was a forbidding place that the locals were fearful of, but it was immensely beautiful. I watched as the monster tried to defend its home and I watched the amazing underwater scenes that had been filmed in the crystal clear water of the spring. I didn’t experience any of the terror I remembered and I found the movie intensely entertaining. By the time the credits rolled I longed to be on an expedition of my own to the Black Lagoon and, in a round-a-bout way, I was!



We started the next morning with an excellent breakfast in the dining room and then we went down and signed up for the first boat excursion into the swamp. The morning was warm and beautiful. The mist was just clearing from the water and we could hear amazing sounds coming from the trees. When the time came the ranger led us to the boat and we set off on our expedition. The very first thing we noticed was that the water flowing from the spring was no longer clear. It more closely resembled black tea. The guide explained that years of poor agricultural practices and other pollution had taken its toll on the springs and that they had not been very clear for years. She also mentioned that the huge amount of rain they had had over the previous weeks had worsened the clarity by introducing tannins from the surrounding forest in the runoff. Despite the lack of clarity we could still see a lot through the dark water. An added bonus was that the water more closely resembled the black waters from the movie – The movie had been filmed in black and white and the black lagoon was actually a brilliant blue lagoon, but that would have been an entirely different movie! Our guide engaged the boat’s electric motor and we silently glided off into the swamp. Over the next hour or so we slowly skirted the right bank of the spring pausing frequently as our guide pointed out some amazing wildlife, or an interesting feature of the spring. We saw countless alligators and turtles sunning themselves in the warm morning light. We also spotted several birds hiding in the tall grass and Spanish moss. We found cormorants and herons and colorful ducks and bright white ibises – The birds were the most abundant animals we saw. When we reached the end of our route down river the guide turned our boat around and crossed a large basin of black water to the other bank and we started heading back up river toward the spring.



A short time after we turned around the guide slowed the boat to show us an interesting bird. I looked down into the water and saw a large form floating underwater grazing on the grass growing up from the riverbed. It didn’t look like the creature from the movie, so the only other animal it could have been was a manatee. The guide confirmed that it was not one but three manatees and then she moved the boat so that we could have a better view. It was the first time that Maria and I had ever seen a manatee, so we were excited. We watched as the manatees surfaced to breath and they gave us several wonderful views before they moved into the deeper water and disappeared in the murk. We moved on to a beautiful spot beneath the canopy of trees that lined the narrow channel we were moving through. The guide paused to show us a massive alligator and then she pointed to a spot about ten feet away from us and told us some stories from the filming of the movie. She said that the spot in front of us was where they filmed the famous scene from the movie where the creature was standing at the beginning of the movie – It was the very scene that had terrified me as a child! She then told us about the man that had played the creature during the water scenes and explained that he had been a local guy that worked at the springs and had a knack for holding his breath for long durations. That skill was noticed by the director and led to him being incorporated into the movie. The monster suit was too small to wear the diving gear of the day, so his ability to hold his breath led to some of the most amazing underwater scenes in the movie.



We moved on and entered the spring itself. We watched another group of manatees swim beside the boat while the guide told us about the spring. She told us about the glass-bottom boat tours they used to do when the water was clear and that it had been possible to see a large mastodon skeleton near the bottom of the spring. We glided past the big diving platform at the edge of the deep part of the spring and then the swimming area. People were already swimming in the murky water and happily jumping from the platform. I asked the guide how they kept the alligators out of the swimming area and she said that the noise and splashing kept them out, but that there were lifeguards on duty that would scare them away when they got too close. We came to a stop at the dock and our tour of the amazing swamp came to an end.



We headed back to the room and got our swimsuits and went back down to the water for a swim in the spring. The water was cold, but refreshing in the morning heat. We swam out to one of the two platforms at the edge of the swimming area and we looked out to the opposite side of the spring where we knew there were large alligators, but we couldn’t see any. We did spot the group of manatees we had seen earlier just outside of the ropes beside the diving platform. We decided that the opportunity to swim with the manatees was too good to pass up so we swam over to the dive platform and climbed up to the upper platform. From there we could see a perfect view of a large manatee and her small calf less than 20 feet away – It was amazing to be in the water with manatees, though they were too far away to see through the tannin-filled murk when we were swimming. We jumped off of the platform several times while the manatees watched and then we headed back up to the room to warm up.



Maria wanted to spend the rest of the morning relaxing with her book, so I decided to head out on one of the trails at the springs to look for snakes. I grabbed my camera gear and I set off. I spent the next two hours walking on dusty trails through the dry forest and on some old boardwalks through some lovely swamps. I found a lot of amazing scenery and several big birds, but I never found any snakes. The big rattlesnakes and cottonmouths and the elusive indigo snakes that called the forest home remained hidden just out of sight! I returned to the room at lunchtime. Instead of eating at the lodge we decided to head off and explore some of the area around the springs. We found an interesting fish shack on the banks of the St. Marks River about twenty minutes away and we sat for an hour feasting on fish and hushpuppies while we listened to Jimmy Buffett’s island tunes and watched the boats go by. After lunch we headed deep into the St. Marks wilderness to a beautiful lighthouse at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The lighthouse was first lit in 1831. The tower as it stood dated from just after the Civil War. We sat at the St Marks light for a long time looking out over the gulf and the beautiful salt marshes that lined the river. We watched the sun set from a tower beside the lighthouse and then we headed back through the marshes towards Wakulla Springs, stopping once to let an alligator cross the road right in front of us.



Back at the lodge we ate one last dinner in the old dining room and then we walked out to the edge of the swimming area and watched the mist roll in from the cold water. After breakfast the following morning we did one last journey into the swamp on the boat. We had a different guide from the day before and he had a very strong southern accent, which added a wonderful draw to his tour – I will always remember him and his deep voice as he enthusiastically belted out, “An’ HIIIING gaa”, referring to the snake-necked bird that emerged from the water beside the boat. On that tour we saw more manatees and alligators, including one that had an arrow sticking out of his back – The guide told us that they had tried to remove the arrow, but had not been successful and that he seemed not to be affected by it.



After the boat tour we took one last swim in the spring. While we were on one of the swim platforms the alligator with the arrow came to the edge of the platform to say hello. The lifeguards paddled out in a little rowboat and slapped a heavy foam swim noodle against the water thus scaring him away. When he was back to his side of the swamp Maria and I jumped back into the water and swam to shore. We went back to the room and got packed up and then we went to the historic soda fountain with its massive marble counter and we had some ice cream. Our time at Wakulla Springs lodge had been amazing. The lodge was definitely faded in its glory, but the state park seemed to be doing a good job keeping the place open and profitable – I hope they can keep it up, because it was a truly special place that transported us back in time to a more glamorous age. We loaded the car and pointed it north toward Georgia.





We had no destination in mind for what would be our last night, but we knew the route we wanted to take. We passed through Tallahassee and crossed the border into Georgia. We paused for lunch and a short walk in the small town of Bainbridge, Georgia and then we made our way to the Kolomoki Mounds Historic Park where we climbed the large Indian mounds and toured the lovely museum. Kolomoki was a place that I had wanted to visit since I was a kid, so I really enjoyed myself. An approaching storm sent us back to the car and we hit the road again. We drove north as the storm raged around us for a while. The sun was shining again by the time we paused for coffee in Columbus, Georgia. We tried to find out where we wanted to spend the night, but nothing was jumping out at us. We were tired and we were only two hours away from home, so we ultimately decided to head home. Late that night we reached our apartment completing the huge loop that we had started a week before. Our road trip had been amazing. We spent most of our time off of the highways, which necessitated a slower pace and allowed us to get a more intimate knowledge of the areas we passed through. We learned a lot about some amazing places that were practically in our backyard, yet had been completely unknown to us. In the interest of not doing too much on the trip we skipped a lot of places that sounded amazing, so I am sure that we will be taking more road trip vacations in the future.

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