Florida Natural Springs

This past weekend Garin and I decided to try to do something a little different than the normal trip to the beach. Garin had heard that there were a few natural springs in NW Florida, so we looked it up and found one that was only an hour away and planned to head there for the day. So Saturday morning we packed our towels and a lunch and headed out for the unknown.

The natural springs here are a cool 68 degrees year round and VERY clear. 68 degrees is actually pretty cold and thankfully Garin threw my wetsuit in the truck before we left! Our plan was to go to the spring, hang out, and snorkel. Well the first spring we went to wasn't exactly what we were expecting. While it was quite refreshing on a HOT Florida day, there wasn't too much to see by the way of snorkeling. We stayed for an hour and then decided to head out to the beach.

Ponce De Leon Springs

On our way out we say a sign for "Vortex Springs" which was a couple of miles down the road and boasted of Scuba diving adventures. My husband, being the diving connoisseur that he is, HAD to go check it out. We hit jackpot ;)

This was a privatized spring (vs the first one which was a state park) and was basically a redneck water park. They had a swing (like the flying trapeze), a zip line, a diving board, a high dive, a slide, and more! They also had a very large hole that divers could go cave diving in (unfortunately Garin didn't have any of his dive cards with him...but he plans to go back!). We spent the afternoon chilling out here and enjoying the clear cold water. We brought our snorkel gear so Garin fluttered around with the divers below (free diving) while I enjoyed watching him from the surface. All in all it was a very fun, different, thing to do for the day.

And yes, we are under an umbrella...it is nearly impossible to be out in the sun down here without having some sort of shade-that sun is brutal!

After a fun filled day together we topped our date day off with dinner out on the town at Chili's. Yum!