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.