Information to Florida’s Blue Spring State Park

The primary time I visited Blue Spring State Park, I used to be trying to find one thing perhaps solely a Floridian would perceive: a summertime break from the seaside. On a sizzling August day, I detoured inland from Daytona Seashore, roughly 32 miles to the north, in the hunt for a freshwater pick-me-up and loads of shade.

What a thrill it was to ditch the crowded sands of a sun-scorched seaside in favor of the cool cover of towering reside oak bushes and palms that encompass the turquoise headspring on the famed Florida state park. And I’m hardly the one one seduced by the place.

“Blue Spring State Park is considered one of my favourite native locations to convey my digital camera,” mentioned industrial photographer Danielle Hanusek of Dwell Fantastic, who lives in close by Lake Helen. “The boardwalks provide you with superior views of the springs the entire time you’re strolling. It looks like actual, outdated Florida. And I all the time love capturing the wildlife and landscapes.”

For Lauren Homosexual of journey journey web site Outdoorsy Diva, the park is most interesting to go to throughout Florida’s cooler winter months attributable to a really particular wildlife encounter. “It is among the finest locations for manatee viewing,” she mentioned. “They arrive in by the lots of searching for hotter waters.”

The alternatives to hike alongside trails that comply with the spring, spot birds like eagles and osprey, launch a canoe or kayak into the St. Johns River, or head out on a guided river boat cruise draw guests to Blue Spring State Park all yr spherical, too.

Prepared for an journey of your personal? Right here’s what it is advisable know earlier than visiting Blue Spring State Park.

Planning Your Go to

Like most state parks in Florida, Blue Spring State Park welcomes guests all year long and is open from 8 a.m. to sundown, day by day. Should you’re driving from Daytona Seashore, rely on round 45 minutes (32 miles) to get right here. Should you’re coming from Orlando Worldwide Airport, about 50 miles south, it takes an hour utilizing the toll highway (417 North) and about 25 minutes longer for those who journey alongside I-4. Jacksonville Worldwide Airport is additional away (just a little over two hours, or 131 miles, to the north).

Most guests arrive on the park in a non-public or rental automobile. Admission prices $6 per automobile for between two and eight passengers. It’s simply $4 to enter in a single-occupant automobile. Pedestrians and bicyclists pay $2 an individual.

In the case of the perfect instances to go to the park, Connor Wagner, park providers specialist and authorized interpretive information at Blue Spring State Park, says it’s all the time finest to reach on the park throughout the first hour or two of its opening or the hour or two earlier than closing for the least crowded expertise – notably through the busy summer season months and manatee season.

Should you’re trying to swim within the river run, it’s potential solely between April 1 and Nov. 15; after that, the waters are closed to guard the manatees, even when none have arrived but. The interval between Nov. 15 and March 31 is manatee season. To your finest likelihood at seeing manatees, plan your journey round a chilly entrance, which brings them into the headspring from the St. Johns River and past.

Wagner says the sluggish season is September and October, and the busiest time of the yr is between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Facilities at Blue Spring State Park are fairly commonplace for Florida state parks and embody picnic areas with shaded benches and grills for barbecuing. The park’s most important concessionaire, Blue Spring State Park Adventures, operates from throughout the park, renting kayaks, canoes, paddleboards, and bikes, and providing guided kayaking excursions in addition to St. Johns River Cruises on pontoon boats. The concessionaire additionally runs a canteen and reward store promoting lunch objects like burgers, meatball subs, sizzling canines, ice lotions, and smoothies. Easy camp meals and provides are additionally on the market.

Accessible facilities on the park embody a wheelchair raise for accessing the St. Johns River Cruises boat, accessible tenting websites, accessible bathhouses and showers, an accessible fishing dock throughout the park on the St. Johns River, an accessible boardwalk, and accessible coated pavilions and grills for picnicking. Interpretive reveals and cabins for in a single day tenting are additionally accessible. The spring additionally affords wheelchair-accessible entry into the water through the swimming season.

Issues to Do

Paddling

You may lease kayaks, canoes, or paddleboards by the hour from the park’s concessionaire to move out by yourself, or go for a guided 1.5-hour, small-group St. Johns River kayak tour, throughout which your information can level out native vegetation, birds, and extra.

St. Johns River Nature Cruise

3 times a day, pontoon boats head out on nature cruises on the St. Johns River from throughout the park. The narrated two-hour cruises immerse guests within the historical past and wildlife of the area as they cruise previous cypress forests scouting for wading birds, manatees, and alligators.

Wildlife Viewing

The possibility to see manatees within the wild — in a habitat the place people aren’t permitted to swim within the water with them — is the park’s largest calling card (extra on that beneath within the manatee part). However there’s heaps extra to see at Blue Spring State Park, too.

“The belongings you’re probably to see right here, after the manatees through the season, are issues like deer, gopher tortoises, wild turkey, and the Florida scrub jay,” mentioned Wagner. “Working right here, I’ve seen bobcats, coyotes, rattlesnakes, black bears, and all kinds of different issues.”

Along with coveted sightings of the Florida scrub jay, birders can search out 142 different chook species noticed alongside the Nice Florida Birding Path throughout the park, together with chestnut-sided warblers, Mississippi kites, and Blackburnian warblers. Alongside the river, search for extra birds like kingfishers, osprey, and eagles.

Alligators reside within the St. Johns River, however don’t be concerned — park rangers control the park’s swimming space for them and can shut it if essential to relocate the reptiles.

Tenting

The park has 51 campsites inside strolling distance of the spring, all with a picnic desk, electrical energy, and a grill. Bathhouses are additionally obtainable.

Tubing, Swimming, and Snorkeling

Throughout the park’s official swimming season, it’s potential to swim, tube (leases can be found from the concessionaire), and snorkel inside a roughly quarter-mile-long stretch of the river, accessible through a platform from the riverbank.

Scuba Diving

The Florida Dive Firm is the one firm permitted to take scuba divers into the park’s waters, and solely exterior of manatee season.

Mountain climbing

The park’s boardwalk is the most well-liked place for a stroll, though a portion of it’s presently closed (more likely to open someday in 2025) whereas it’s underneath building. You may nonetheless stroll out on it throughout manatee season to identify manatees. The park’s longest mountaineering path is the 4.5-mile, out-and-back Pine Island Path, a rugged path by means of a number of habitats. The Stark Path is a enjoyable one for elevation change, a rarity in Florida, making it fashionable with mountain bikers. And the .25-mile loop referred to as the Sand Pine Scrub Path between the primary workplace and campground is the perfect place to identify Florida scrub jays.

Seeing Manatees on the Park

Throughout the cooler months of the yr, from Nov. 15  to March 31, it’s manatee season on the park. The primary-magnitude spring right here pumps out 102 million gallons of recent water a day at a continuing temperature of 72 levels, which makes it a veritable sizzling tub for manatees trying to heat up from colder winter waters within the St. Johns River and Atlantic Ocean (the mammals are very prone to chilly stress syndrome, which might kill them).

“We’ve got some manatees that principally reside inside 10 miles of this park their whole lives, and we have now some manatees that may swim lots of of miles away and are available again each single winter,” says Wagner. The colder the climate is exterior, the extra manatees might be within the park, he says.

Swimmers aren’t allowed within the water with the manatees throughout manatee season. However for those who encounter them within the spring exterior of the season, which is feasible, says Wagner, attempt to keep at the very least 20 toes away and by no means seize onto them. The perfect place to watch manatees safely and with out disturbing their pure conduct is all the time from the park’s boardwalk. Throughout one record-breaking day not too long ago, greater than 900 manatees had been noticed.

“The boardwalk hangs over the spring, and you’ll look down and customarily the manatees are excellent in entrance of you, swimming round. So it is one of many closest methods to see manatees responsibly within the wintertime,” he says. “We take delight in with the ability to enable folks very, superb views of them whereas not impacting the manatees’ well-being.”

Ideas for Visiting

Plan to reach early on the park. Significantly through the busy summer season weekends, it’s finest to reach an hour or extra earlier than opening, says Wagner, as vehicles begin lining up early to get inside.

Comply with the park on social media (Instagram and Fb) throughout manatee season for day by day updates on the variety of manatees sighted throughout the park. “Should you see there are 100 manatees within the spring on a Thursday, and also you take a look at the climate, and also you see that it may keep chilly, you may assume that quantity will go from 100 to round 500 in three or 4 days.”

Making a reservation for a ship cruise or kayak tour will get you into the park sooner on busy days than ready within the automobile line. That mentioned, take into account that these reservations are non-refundable, Wagner famous.

Mid-march by means of April is a superb time to go to the park, says Wagner. “Often between March 15 and April 15 is a four-week interval the place we have now 1000’s of fireflies that mild up at our park proper after sundown,” he says. “We do particular late hours the place folks can keep after the park closes and stroll alongside the boardwalk to see them lighting up.” Typically there are even manatees nonetheless within the spring then, so you might doubtlessly get fortunate right now of yr and see each.

Go away your radios and waterproof audio system at house: The objective is to calm down in nature right here, and such objects are prohibited on the water.

Pop by the customer heart, or higher but, name forward to see what particular programming is perhaps taking place throughout your go to. Month-to-month ranger-led packages embody tram excursions by means of the park’s scrub habitat, full moon hikes held after hours, Jay Walks to search for the Florida scrub jay, and Junior Ranger Packages for teenagers in first by means of sixth grade.