Erika & Brian

Quebec City, QC

Montreal, QC

Albany, NY

Cape Cod, MA

New York, NY

Roanoke, VA

Asheville, NC

Atlanta, GA

Daytona Beach, FL

New Orleans, LA

Austin, TX

Boulder, CO

Snorkeling in Silver Glen Springs & Alexander Springs

Dec 28, 2021 | Daytona Beach, FL

We started our magnificent day off with Taco Bell, as anyone would. We scarfed half our breakfast down and hit the road in excitement. We were headed to Ocala, to snorkel in the crystal clear, fresh water springs.

Our first stop was Silver Glen Springs. We set up a picnic spot and set down all of our things. We figured the water might be a bit cold, so we hiked around the area first to work up a sweat. We found puddles of deep red water, and constantly kept our eyes peeled for gators. Erika did get a quick glance at a snake that slithered across our path, and it looked bright and dangerous. After looking it up on trusty old Google, we decided it probably wasn't a venomous one.

Once we were no longer able to keep our excitement at bay, we headed for the water. It really wasn't too cold, to our pleasure. We had kid-sized goggles that Brian swiped from the indoor heated pool at our hotel. "Finders keepers" is a big motto of his. Erika wasn't pleased that he had taken them at first, but changed her tune once she realized how useful they'd be. The water was light blue and completely clear. You could see everything! The ground underwater was sandy with some seashells strewn about. There was a big circular divot in the sand in one place where you could dive down more deeply. There was one school of fairly large fish that were swimming around throughout the spring that were fun to chase.

We got out of the water to go eat the other half of our Taco Bell we had brought with us only to find an issue. Ants had infiltrated the bag. To Erika's horror (she hates ants above anything else), they were swarmed all over the food. Interestingly enough, they only were swarmed onto her food. Brian's food was basically untouched, and he ate it happily. We popped back into the water for a final swim before deciding to head to another spring. We just couldn't get enough!

Our second spring was Alexander Springs. The swimming area was bigger than the 1st spot, and had a lot more plants. Towards the back of the swimming zone, there was a huge mass of plants that come all the way up to the surface. Tons of little fish were swimming all throughout. We tried swimming through the base of the plants, but they were dense and kind of creepy. There was a beautiful, large bird perched on a log within the dense plants that we sat and watched for a little while. We used our handy goggles to explore the area and spot as many little fish as we could before it started to get late in the day, and too cold to swim any longer.