Wednesday, January 15, 2003
This was a day we spent entirely inside the park, which gave me a nice break from driving. We wanted to do the Volksmarch inside the park, the St. John’s River Eco-tour, and take in the ranger program on manatees.

The Blue Spring State Park Volksmarch starts at the entrance station and winds back thru the campground (right past our campsite) to the trail over to Blue Spring. Instead of going to the spring, however, the trail immediately branches off past rental cabins into a large natural area. We seemed to be following a perimeter road thru saw palmetto and slash pine areas. This section was an in-and-out, and we missed the turn around sign at the beginning of a swampy area so we kept walking another ½ kilometer until we were stopped by water coursing across the path from the swamp on the left to the swamp on the right. The water was ankle deep, so we decided not to chance picking our way across on an old log and turned around. It was only after this that we saw the turn around sign. We didn’t mind the extra walking since the swamp area was very pretty and the still waters gave us several nice mirror pictures.

Returning to the rental cabin area, we now looped around the board walk that parallels the Blue Springs Run that runs from the source about ½ mile to the St. John River. There were many informative signboards along the walk which detailed the history of the area, but the star attraction was the manatees. The manatees cannot withstand the cold water of the St. John in the winter if it gets below 65 degrees, so they must come into the 73 degree water of Blue Springs to rest and sleep. The Blue Springs water is 73 all year round because it has coursed thru deep in the earth and come to be that equilibrium temperature. However, since there is no oxygen in the water at the end of that under earth trip, there is very little plant life in the Blue Springs Run and so the manatees must return to the St. John River during the day to feed. They are complete herbivores and need to eat 1/5 of their body weight in aquatic plants each day, similar to the elephant which is their closest living relative. So altho there were quite a few manatees in the spring every time we passed by while camped nearby, the best time to see lots of them is either early morning or late evening. We returned from the manatee back thru the campground to the entrance station to finish the walk.

After the walk we had lunch at the campground and returned to the St. John riverside to take a narrated eco-tour on a small pontoon boat that held 25 people. The boat tour meandered upstream in the main channel and along two “oxbows” or side branches of the St. John. The oxbows had almost no current and glassy still water, so motoring across at trolling speeds gave the feeling of gliding across the water. We were told that the water level was relatively high for January because Florida had received an unusual amount of rain in December. In fact, the guide said the water levels were about 2 ½ feet above normal for this time of year. The areas along the shores were below water for the most part and looked very much like cypress swamp.

The guide said most of the trees were bald cypress, which lose their leaves in the winter and are ultimately responsible for the water having the dark, tannin-stained look. The maples, however, were already getting their red spring leaves, which added a splash of color to the riverside. The wildlife we saw were mainly birds of different species such as egrets, ibises, herons, wood ducks, cormorants, and other small water fowl. We also saw one young alligator for a brief instant before he plunged from the tree where he was sunning himself into the water. We saw footprints of the manatee swimming by, but the water was too dark to see their bodies. The guide would always shift into neutral to let the manatee pass without danger from our propeller, which also had a propeller guard on it. All together, the boat tour was very relaxing, even hypnotic at times.

We wrapped up the day with a ½ hour ranger presentation on the manatees. That is where we learned about their susceptibility to temperature and use of the Blue Springs Run for over-nighting. Manatee can be distinguished by the unique pattern of scars on their backs left by boat propellers, and he had a chart of all the manatee that used Blue Springs Run since the park was created in 1972. Every morning the rangers go out and count the manatees that have stayed overnight in the spring, identifying the individuals by their scars. The chart showed a steady and dramatic increase in manatee visits since the park was created at the manatees protected from human contact. The other good news was that the yearly census of manatees in Florida for 2002 had shown an increase from 2001, so the species population might be stabilized, which is critical since there are only about 2000 of the Florida sub-species left.