Silver Springs Underwater in Healing Ground

We celebrated our 39th anniversary this weekend with a trip to Silver Springs. I wanted to ride the glass bottom boats at least once more in my life. My last visit was 56 years ago. Not much has changed!

The guide called this “eel grass”, but I think it is Hydrilla, which can tangle you up. You can tell the direction of the current by the bend of the grass:

The dollar is in there for tips. When I toured at age 7, the guide tossed coins into the bottom of the boat as a pitch for tips. My brothers were thrilled and were reaching in before my mother grabbed them back by their shirt collars. Today the guide points out the carefully placed dollar (in the middle so you’d have to really reach for it) and tells you to tip him like that! I do not take kindly to direct requests for a tip, but he was good, so I threw in a dollar.

The springs are created from deep, ancient sinkholes created as the water bubbled up through the porous limestone bedrock (called “karst”). This next picture is a bit disorienting, so I advise you to try and view it as I did, looking straight down into the water. That blue hole in the middle is the actual spring itself:

Sometimes the force just splits the rock into ledges. You can see the bubbles coming out from underneath a ledge if you look closely:

Lotsa fish. You’re looking 80 feet down, believe it or not!

Some videos:

1st up, baby gator

This video shows a tree under the water that dates back to prehistoric times, and the dugout canoe was used by the Native Americans who hunted the springs.

I’ll show you Silver Springs above ground in my next post.