Silver River

 5.8 miles, 2:47 hours

We had planned to go to salt Springs and possibly go swimming to see the manatees there. There had been reports that earlier in the week hundreds of manatees were seen in salt Springs and in blue Springs. In fact, blue Springs had a record of over 900 manatees on Monday, the problem was that today and yesterday the weather had warmed up enough that the manatees were swimming back out to the rivers So our original plan was scrapped. so off, we went to Silver River we put in at Silver Springs State Park and Kayak down to Ray Wayside Park. It doesn’t matter the day the time or the weather, this river is always beautiful. We only saw two small manatees today, perhaps they were lost from their group, we saw several alligators, sunning themselves and as usual tons of turtles. We also saw several monkeys in the trees, but not as many as we have seen in the past.

Here is a brief history of Silver Springs. In the late 1800s the glass bottom boats were built for tourist that came from the north. It became a very popular tourist attraction and in the 1930s Hollywood noticed and started filming movies. Here it is said that the monkeys along the river Originated from a film that brought in monkeys. What the filmmakers didn’t know was that monkeys could swim, and they escaped from the isOther side of the river and now there are about 500 to 600 monkeys along the silver Spring river.in the 1970s other Florida attractions began to grow much bigger and attendance at Silver Spring declined.2013 the Florida Park service took control of Silver Spring resort emerged it withForming Silver Springs state park.