Our Spring Tour

Spring is the season when the days begin to grow warmer, the flowers begin to bloom and the birds sing a cheerful song. It is an awakening. A time to rise and rejuvenate. Even here in Florida, where the change in seasons is hardly noticed, spring brings an inherent feeling of revitalization and renewed hope. For us, it inspires to travel, to hit the highway and seek adventure. Where better to begin our Spring Tour than to visit some of Florida’s natural springs? 

Our first stop, Silver Springs State Park, is home to the world-famous glass bottom boats. We love this park for its natural Florida beauty and variety of activities. We have camped here before. The sites are spacious and come with water and electric. Some sites have sewer, but not all. 

There is no shortage of things to do. We have a post about our past camping trip at Silver Springs State Park. I encourage you to look back at that post from May 15, 2022 for a more detailed and in-depth description of the park, including some historical facts. 

On this trip, we met with some friends from a camping group we belong to consisting mostly of retired firefighters and their spouses, many of whom I once worked with. Camping with a group is fun. Shared activities, like playing games, group hikes, biker gang bicycle rides, kayaking down the river together and u-pick blueberry outings, followed by evenings around a campfire laughing and telling stories, is the essence of comradery that create lasting friendship and wonderful camping memories. We really enjoyed our four nights at Silver Springs State Park.

But that wasn’t the end of it. After we pulled away from Silver Spring State Park, we accompanied the camping group to Rainbow Springs State Park for a change in scenery. The attraction for this park is tubing down the Rainbow River. The state park offers tube rental and a shuttle service. The shuttle runs only on weekends up until May 1 when it begins running every day through the summer. If you plan to go tubing, check their website for exact dates and times.

Florida springs are cold water springs averaging 72 degrees year-round. On a day when the air temperature was nearly twenty degrees colder than the water, I decided to skip the tubing. Some in our group, including Grammi, braved the cool weather and went for a kayak trip. Kayaking down the Rainbow River can get very busy and clogged by tubers, but on this cool weekday outing, our group said they practically had the river to themselves for a quiet relaxing paddle. 

On another day at Rainbow Springs, the ladies from the camping group went thrifting in the nearby town of Dunnellon. They returned that afternoon with smiling faces toting bags filled with all the bargain items they found. Grammi bought a pair of shoes with the original tag still attached for eight dollars. She said, “they would cost over one hundred dollars brand new”. She was so proud of herself. 

While the ladies were thrifting, Danny, Gary and I thought we would sneak off for lunch at Swampy’s Bar and Grille. It’s a popular restaurant right on the Rainbow River. We got a good table outside along the water where we could sit and watch the tubers and kayakers float by. To our surprise, guess who we saw there? It was the thrifting ladies. They had the same idea for lunch as us. Supposedly, thrifting can work up quite an appetite. So much for us guys trying to sneak out for a bite to eat. 

Another place in Dunnellon we like to eat is the Front Porch Restaurant. It’s a mom-and-pop restaurant with big portions of home-cooked comfort food. They are especially known for their fresh baked pies featuring heaping meringues and flaky crust. On one of the days our group went there for breakfast. The service was friendly and they had no problem pushing together some tables to accommodate our big group.  

After three nights at Rainbow River State Park, we said our goodbyes to our friends from the camping group and headed for Blue Springs State Park to meet up with family. Two of our daughters and their husbands were to meet us there as well as our newest family member, our 7-month-old granddaughter. We have eagerly anticipated this part of our Spring Tour. We are a camping family and we love to get together for camping trips.

Blue Spring State Park is another 72 degrees year-round spring and is a winter refuge for manatees. When it warms up in the spring, the manatee’s swim away into the river leaving the spring to swimmers to take a refreshing dip in the cool waters. Unfortunately, a few weeks before we arrived, we were notified that all water activities in the springs would be closed until next year. They began a restoration project to prevent erosion along the Blue Springs River. 

We were not deterred by the closure and found plenty of other things to keep us occupied, like renting a pontoon boat from Holly Bluff Marina for a day of cruising the St. Johns River. It was a perfect sunny day for being on the water. We saw alligators, manatees, turtles, a bald eagle and a variety of water fowl. Bryan and I watched as Derrick caught two large mouth bass. He said our problem was that we were using our fishing poles when he was using his catching pole. 

We stopped for lunch along the river.  We tied up to the dock at Swamp House Riverfront Grill and went inside the restaurant. Though the food was not too bad, it took way too long for it to come out of the kitchen and that turned us off from ever wanting to come back again. At least the cold beer and rum buckets arrived quickly.

We spent four nights at Blue Springs State Park enjoying our time with family. It was our granddaughter’s first camping trip. We even had a surprise visit from our great granddaughter for one night when her father dropped her off on his way to an event in Orlando. 

We had eleven wonderful nights with friends and family surrounded by nature and a beautiful Florida spring. We could have gone on longer, Florida has many more springs with camping, but this was enough for us to get ready for an upcoming four month camping travel adventure. It was a shakedown trip to help us get back in the groove of living in the camper again. I would say our Spring Tour was a success.

Until next time, happy days and safe travels.