The first time I went to rainbow springs was last summer and I was carsick the whole way there. That’s a three-hour drive from Ring-a-ling so you can imagine I was pretty relieved when the car finally stopped and we all got out. This was the first time I had ever been to a Florida spring. They’re amazing. Please go if you haven’t been. 10/10 would recommend to a friend.

But don’t get car-sick on the way there.

0/10 would not recommend car-sickness.

The state park itself is so-so. Very crowded. The day we went was a hot and sticky florida-summery kind of day so hot and sticky humans flocked there. What the park was known for (besides the spring itself) was its “waterfalls”.

Let me tell you, I have seen waterfalls. These were “waterfalls”.  Totally man made, pumps were visible, and you hardly had to walk twenty feet to see all of them.

But the spring itself, uh! Let me tell you…

There’s a reason people used to think these springs had magical healing abilities. They literally look like a desktop background. The water is SO clear and blue and full of this lush green underwater grass, but the swimming area brought back memories of my childhood soccer team. The size of the blocked off area we could swim in was about the same as the tiny grass field, and there was an official looking fat-guy with a megaphone yelling at us all to stay on that tiny field.

That was the first I knew of rainbow springs state park. (The next time we met was a much better story, don’t worry.) and after that, I was hooked on springs.

We planned the trip the night before. We’ll go to Silver Springs state park because neither of us has been there and it looks AH-may-zing. We left the next morning bright and early. I forgot my camera batteries, and he forgot the bananas we were going to feed to the monkeys but it ended up being fine. My camera broke anyways and the monkeys could have given us rabies. Silver springs was probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen. A thin mist sat over the crystal clear water under a tunnel of bright green sunfiltered trees. Here’s a photo I took before my camera broke.

As you kayak through the tunnel of trees, you come across an abandon campsite from the 50’s with big log cabins and a sunken tugboat. Also, silver springs is one of the only places in Florida with wild monkeys. Crazy right? 10/10

The only thing we were sad to hear about silver springs, is that you’re not allowed to swim there. As you can see from the photo, we had brought our snorkel gear! (we ended up swimming anyways but shh don’t tell anyone).

When we were done there, I suggested we go to rainbow springs which was only 30 minutes away and I knew for a fact that we could swim there.

Once we got to rainbow springs we found a place to undock the kayak. We asked other kayakers. “Are we allowed to swim here?” and they just shrugged. “I don’t see why not!”

That was exactly the answer we were looking for. We kayaked excitedly at first. We asked people around where the best place to swim was and the answer was always the same. Upriver, upriver, upriver.  So upriver we went. As you can imagine, we had been up very early, kayaking all morning, and now we were a little pooped. We joked that we should just grab onto someone’s boat as they passed and let them tow us upriver.

We had to stop. We tied the kayak to a tree and hopped out into ankle deep water right in front of a tunnel leading deep into the forest. As we were about to enter the tunnel, a boat full of drunk people pulled up.

“HeeeeEEEEYyyyyy. Are you guys going in the tunnel?”

“Yeah we are!”

We started walking away, trying to avoid drunken idiocy. They yelled after us:

“Our friends had sex in that tunnel!”

“Awesome!” We yelled back.

In the middle of the tunnel was a fence. “No Tresspassing” the sign told us.

“Yes trespassing” the cut lock and swung open fence, told us.

Here’s a picture of the tunnel:

As we were walking out of the tunnel we ran back into our drunken friends from earlier.

            “Heyyyyy its you guys! How’d you like the tunnel!”

We said we liked it and began to climb into our kayak.

            “Are you guys going upstream?”

We stopped kayaking away. “Yeah why?”

“That’s where we’re going! You should let us tow your kayak!”

Now that was an offer our tired arms couldn’t refuse