Kayaking Florida’s Springs

Florida has hundreds of freshwater springs, mainly located in the north/central part of the state, which are beautiful places for paddling, swimming, and wildlife viewing. Our 2 week stop near the town of Crystal River, about an hour north of Tampa, was to kayak a couple of these spring-fed rivers. Preferably with manatees!

We stayed at Tillis Hill Campground in the Withlacoochee State Forest, where all sites had water/electric hookups and were very spacious.

Manatees are large, gentle, and curious marine mammals that congregate near Florida’s springs during winter months (Nov-Mar), where they depend on the relatively warm 72-degree water for survival. The Crystal River Wildlife Refuge, formed to protect manatee habitat, is arguably one of the best places to see them.

You can take a shuttle from the visitor center to a boardwalk overlooking the star of the refuge, Three Sisters Spring. On very cold days there can be hundreds of manatees in this spring.

There are numerous tour boat companies that can bring you to swim/snorkel with the manatees, and this appears to be an extremely popular thing to do.

We opted to launch our kayaks from the Hunter Springs city park, which was a 30 min paddle from the entrance of the run to Three Sisters.

We floated around for an hour taking photos and videos and would say that the earlier you go the better. We were there at 8 am and it seemed like they were all waking and leaving to go find the 100lbs of seagrass needed for their daily diet.

There is a video below if you would like to see one swimming! You might have to watch it directly on our website.

We also found manatees at Hunter Springs. This one came up to breathe right next to Michael!

On another day, we had a huge paddling adventure on the very clear aquamarine-hued Weeki Wachee River. We launched at Rogers Park and paddled 6.5 miles upstream to the headspring at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park before floating back to our truck. We were exhausted, most people just paddle downstream from the state park and use a shuttle service to get back to their vehicles.

We did see several manatees from a distance on this river.

The following weekend, we launched at KP Hole Park and paddled 2 miles upstream on the Rainbow River, which many people say is one of Florida’s prettiest springs.

The closer you get to the springs, the river becomes a kaleidoscope of greens and blues. There were so many turtles and birds and even an alligator along this paddle. We also found a small spring run that we paddled up.

We look forward to kayaking more of these springs next time we visit Florida! Next up is a beach state park in the panhandle, which will be our final Florida stop this year.