May 22, 2021
Quin and I have been talking about either kayaking to Silver Springs and Monkey Island or taking a little boat for a couple of years now. I had heard about these wild monkeys that hang around that area and I thought it would be so awesome to see them. When my dad and I were on the glass bottom boat tour at Silver Springs, they told us how the monkeys were brought in for the filming of the show Tarzan, many years before. I guess the monkeys were not suppose to be able to swim. Not only could they swim but they escaped and made a new life and have been there ever since, coming and going as they please.
Quin was about to leave for New York for the season and we had one more day to have an adventure. After about an hour of listing things to do we landed on kayaking to Silver Springs. Now we have learned from the past that the two of us don’t really work that well together on certain things so it was decided from our first kayak trip together that he paddles and I just sit there and look pretty. Nailed it! hahaha. This sure did confuse the many people we ran across that day. A lot of them made comments on how two people should be paddling. We just kept saying that we like our relationship and would like keep it that way. People crack me up.
We picked the perfect day to go kayaking. The weather was just right and we had so much fun. What was great for me was when we stopped at the docks at Silver Springs. It was in the exact place that Casey and I ended up when we took our short hike while on our State Parking Journey. I never would have imagined that day that I would be arriving to the park from the water! Soon thereafter, we got to the end of the trail, so to speak. We rode through the park itself and then took a break at the kayak launch to stretch our legs for a bit. Up to that point we were lucky enough to see manatee, birds, and even a little gator but we had not seen any monkeys. The kid that was working the launch said he hadn’t seen any in like a month. He wondered if they were deeper in the woods since there was plenty of green for them to feed on that time of year. We realized that we were not going to accomplish our goal of seeing monkeys but we sure did exceed our goal of having an awesome adventure. We took a water trail back that showed really old buildings in the park and sunken boats too. It was such an amazing day! I couldn’t think of a better way to experience the waters of Silver Springs although I am pretty sure Quin would be happy doing so next time in a small motor boat.
