Sunday at Silver Springs Nature Park

For those of you who are not familiar with the Silver Springs Nature Park, it is located just east of Ocala, Fl in the town of Silver Springs. The park is absolutely beautiful and is the home of the largest artesian spring formation in the world, producing 550 million gallons of crystal clear water daily.

The family arrived at the park about 10:30 Sunday morning and spent a very educational and fun day in one of Florida's most beautiful parks. Here are some of the pictures that tell the story of our day.

By the year 1950 the park was getting over 800,000 visitors/year.

The park is also home to a Wildlife Rehabilitation Program which rescues and rehabilitates animals that have been injured in the wild. Many of the animals and birds we saw today were rehabed in this program.

You never go to Florida without seeing our aligators.

Reeves Muntjac Deer - Only grows to an average of 20" and weighs only 30-40 lbs. Elongated teeth resemble tusks.

This is the East African Crowned Crane

The beautiful flamingos

These two are 'fearless!!!!

It looks like the gators mouth comes right through the glass! Dalton remains fearless!!

This was one of the rescured birds - who's wing was damanged.

This was the bumpiest ride ever!!! But we had fun seeing a multitude of animals on this Safari Ride and some pretty crazy trees!

SMILE!

After the giraffe feeding we made our way to the only ride, other than the three boat rides, and this one takes you high above the park. While I am not comfortable with anything that goes HIGH......I joined Crystal and the kids, and spent my time taking some aerial shots instead of looking down.

As we tourned the springs on the world famous glass bottom boat and saw the amazing springs and underwater caves we were amazed at the beauty of the area. I'm sure that many of you will remember these programs and movies, but I'll bet a lot of you did not know they were all filmed here at Silver Springs. Here is just a portion of the list:

More than 100 episodes of Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges

Six Tarzan Movies

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Smokey and the Bandit

Never Say Never Again... with Sean Connery

And then the trip back home. After spending nearly six hours walking the park the kids still had lots of energy. Dalton begged to go play pickleball, and Chauna wanted to go swimming instead. We were both pretty exhausted, but hey - how often do we get this opportunity? So we dressed for swimming and went to play pickleball. After about 4 games, it began to thunder. We saw the ligntening so had to head for home instead of the swimming pool .

After dinner it was more card games. But we were in dreamland by about 9:00 pm.

They headed on to Lakeland on Monday morning to visit with Crystal's family. We feel so blessed to have such a wonderful family and the opportunity to share such special moments with them. After visiting with family they will make a short trip to Palm Beach before heading home to Davenport, IA. Until next time.............we'll have to share pictures.

Not hard to tell how much they tired us out! We are generally up by 6:30 in the morning. Neither of us pulled out today until after 9!