Water under the natural bridge

I got tingly reading about this park:  a river (the Santa Fe) tumbling along like rivers do, then PLUNGING into a sinkhole to travel underground for three miles before it GUSHES back to the surface and resumes its riverly ways.  I couldn't imagine what that would look like!  Can you?

At great personal danger I recorded this phenomenon for you to enjoy.  You will feel the exact rush of wind and see the current raging in real time, more or less, but exactly as we saw it.

Hold on, Annie!  I'll pull you back from the rushing waters! Grab that Styrofoam cup full of lead.  Notice her hair getting unkempt from the winds.

Lies

This is a beautiful natural area, with lots of wildlife.  When you get to the sinkhole, you'll know only because there's no more river.  If you happen to know which way to go, you can walk three miles and be there when the river re-emerges and continues flowing into the Suwanee.  I think it looks sort of like the sinkhole, but backwards.

Creepy part:  Divers have explored the three miles of underground river.

Interesting part:  we met a man on the trail who told us we had passed alligators on the river rocks!

Can you see it?

We couldn't either, until he pointed it out:

 

Once we knew how to look, we saw them everywhere.

NOW I get it.

The O'Leno (say "oh LEE no") State Park benefited big time from the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  

 

I hadn't realized they replanted forests and fought wildfires.

Here's Annie, with a cypress slice for scale:

The dot at the middle is the cypress as a seedling when Genghis Khan did notable stuff, like killing Kirk's son.  KHAN!!!  Eight hundred years later, here's Annie.  A lot has happened.

Eat your heart out, Tucker.  We got nuthin' BUT cute.

What we did on our summer vacation

Google has admitted paternity of Blogger, so I'm waiting to see Google take it in hand and provide some discipline.  Blogger wants limits.  It needs boundaries.  Blogger will throw a tantrum in the cookie aisle right in front of God and the Keebler elves to see how far it can push, and it's Google's job to pick it up and carry it out to the minivan while it screams YOU'RE NOT MY REAL OWNER!

If you want an alternative to Adsense, try Chitaka.  I'm just beginning with it, so I can't say whether you can quit your job at Amazon, but it's certainly no more obnoxious than Google Ads, and there's a lower payout threshold.  ETA:  WOW, did I lie.  It is egregiously, completely, irredeemably obnoxious.  I have removed the link because it's the only thing left on here that could (maybe) be causing sudden audio ads, acid reflux, hookworms, and plantar warts.

We watched the fireworks from the Save-a-Lot parking lot, and we LIKED it.  Surrounding counties have banned fireworks, and so Lake City got the spillover from droughtier places.  I took bad pictures, drank bad whiskey, and woke up with my sunglasses on, just not on my face.

What has eight legs and no shaving cream?  This guy:

Annie wants you to notice the buttal smiley face.

I told Annie to put her hand up next to the spider for perspective.  She said if I wanted perspective I should watch BBC News.

What have you been doing this week?  We went to see water fall into a hole, but that's too exciting for tonight.