High Springs, FL

After our race weekend Mike and I picked up a rental car and headed out to a B&B in High Springs. This little place was right up our alley. Lots of outdoors activities to do, no crowds, and plenty of ways to be active. It was a lot of fun!

The swinging bridge in Olena State Park....

We spent the afternoon hiking around the trails in the park.....

We kept seeing these strange formations everywhere. I was told they were Cyrpress Knobs and they're the roots of the trees. The area is so swampy they form above ground so they can get oxygen.

Our ugly blue rental car.....

The Rustic Inn Bed & Breakfast.....

The next day we rented a canoe and headed down The Santa Fe River....
.

We saw hundreds of these cute little turtles sunning themselves on logs.....

We even saw a few of these guys......

At first we thought that alligators were just smaller than we realized.....but then we turned a corner and a full-grown adult alligator dove off the shore into the river just beneath our boat. Scared the daylights out of me!!! We realized then that the alligators we'd been seeing weren't full grown. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the "big un", but in my ever-so-vivid imagination it looked something like this.....

I admit it. I panicked. I yelled (repeatedly) at Mike to hurry up and paddle. He just laughed at me. Insensitive! It would have served him right if Mr. Alligator had bit a chunk out of our boat (what can I say? I grew up watching Crocodile Dundee....gators/crocs....they're all the same bloodthirsty buggers).

We pulled into a little inlet to see Lily Springs and got to meet her caretaker Naked Ed. Now the travel brochures we'd picked up warned us about the eccentric caretaker, Naked Ed, and how he lived there year-round and would greet visitors in his loin cloth.......well....he didn't wear a loin cloth. Yep, that was a little uncomfortable for this innocent girl, but luckily he mostly stayed behind his little podium and we had a great conversation.

This is his little wall of life sayings. Most of them were very positive like "Love is a four letter word we don't use often enough" and "Thank you Lord for all the things I have and may I only ask Thee for the things I need", but some relfected his quirky sense of humour: "Ladies who choose to skinny dip will receive a free signed coaster. Men who choose to skinny dip will be shot". He also had his little box of "trophies"....the local brewery had named a drink after him and you could buy a case of Naked Ed's Pale Ale while in town.

Eccentric? Yes. But also very nice. He was quite interesting to talk to actually. He's lived there almost 30 years now...even through freezing temps and hurricanes. He says one day he decided he'd never be able to tour the world because he suffers from Brittle Bone disease....so rather than let that get him down, he decided insead to set up residence at Lily Springs and let the world come see him.

Mike braving a dip in the springs....

WARNING!!! Horrific swimsuit shot!

That's as far in as I got...too cold!!!

One last dip in Blue Springs and it was time to go....we had been on the river 7 hours, but there was still so much we didn't get to see! Maybe someday we'll make it back.

This was the first long vacation that Mike and I had taken together since our honeymoon 11 years ago. It was so much fun to be together and reconnect. We were gone a total of 6 days and we filled them with laughter, romance, fun, and adventure. It's a trip I'll never forget and I'm so glad I got to experience it with him!