Florida State Parks: Falling Waters State Park
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| Florida State Parks Passport: Falling Waters State Park & Florida Caverns State Park |
Summary:
Today was a two state park kind of day. After a morning spelunking in the caverns, one of the best meals of my life, and a 30 minute drive - we arrived at Falling Waters State Park.
Or maybe we should call it Trickling Waters State Park.
Or maybe we should call it Trickling Waters State Park.
The Gear:
The Story:
I have started to catch on that parks usually stamp the passports at the front gate ranger station. Today after showing the annual park pass and paying $2 for an additional person, I asked to have my passport stamped then. There was only one car behind me so not a big deal.
We drive down the road to get to the main parking area, hit the restrooms, and top off our water (read: Nuun) bottles.
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| Butterfly Garden...Didn't see butterflies though. |
There's a main path from the parking lot/restrooms that will eventually split into two different trails. The tall trees were very beautiful and a slight change of scenery from our caverns hike. We turn left to head towards the waterfall. Why not start out with the big feature?
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| Decisions!!! |
It did not take very long to get to our destination. We were welcomed by a sign describing the sinkholes. There is a (w)hole [pun intended] system of these sinks, but the one for the waterfall is most notable. No one knows where the water in this sinkhole eventually ends up. Yet another mystery at a FL State Park.
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| Sinkholes Information |
Sinkhole and Falls at Falling Waters State Park
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| It's a pretty deep sinkhole. |
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| Technically water IS falling. |
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| Standing next to the tallest water trickle in FL |
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| Alyssa and I (kinda sorta) next to the trickle |
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| Alyssa and I taking a selfie |
I attempted to take a vertical panorama to include both the top of the waterfall and the bottom of the sink. It turned out pretty okay. That's 73 feet of water droppage right there.
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| First time creating a vertical panorama |
Falling Waters State Park was great about having informative signs throughout the walking trails. The sign about the waterfall describes how it's not a typical waterfall due to it flowing into a sinkhole. Basically a natural acid in the water dissolved rock underneath the surface which resulted in the roof collapsing. It's a serious problem in Florida.
I had never heard of Yaupon before. No berries today, but I would really like to try "Casina". If it's a ceremonial drink, it must be good right?
We take the boardwalk from there to explore more. At this point we are not using a map and just seeing where we end up. The boardwalk is well constructed and clean. It's an unusual concept from most forest parks I've explored. Looking at the map after the fact, there looks to be an actual hiking trail - The Wiregrass Trail, which we could have taken at the beginning. We only made it onto that trail returning to the parking lot from the lake. It may have been nice to check it out more, but I thought the boardwalk was a fascinating feature of the park.
Boardwalk at Falling Waters State Park
According to signs, they tried to find and drill oil here in Falling Waters Hill, starting in 1919. The effort only lasted until 1921 at a final depth of 4912 feet with no real success on any profitable amounts. All that effort and now all that's left is this protruding shaft. |
| Heh..you said shaft..heh |
Lake at Falling Waters State Park
We approached the lake, which according to the sign, is a man-made lake. Its overflow goes to one of the original creeks that feeds the waterfall in order to help the flow. I'm guessing we would not have seen even a trickle if it was not for this lake, but that's just me making assumptions.
There was a nice covered deck area off of the lake where we decided to rest a bit and chat. And take pictures.
From there we got on Wiregrass Trail, where we were greeted by a long series of switchbacks. It was evident that people have made shortcuts to avoid the walking, but we needed to reach our daily steps goals and do not believe in cheating. We got to see another fun informational sign about the Florida black bear. What a cutie pie. I gave the one on the sign some ear scratches and belly rubs, which obviously a real live one would appreciate too. I thought the nail marks in the paw print were cool. They can also run FAST. 30 miles per hour. But for how long???
We passed another (smaller) parking area and took this dirt road back to the main parking area. It was a cute little park that did not need too much time to explore. There are campsites as well as a bit more hiking. It might be more memorable in the summer right after one of our afternoon rainshowers.
Hurdles:
It would have been great to see more of a flow in the waterfall. This Spring season hasn't been very rainy in the Florida panhandle.
Relevant Quote:
Today the waterfall is a trickle. Tomorrow it may be a full flowing beauty. You can't know one extreme without feeling or seeing the other. Life is full of happy and sad, beauty and ugliness, success and failure, etc. We cannot truly embrace and enjoy the positives if we have never known anything negative. Bad days happen, but there will be an amazing day soon. Today was one of those amazing days where I could explore new places with great company.
Other:
- This was my 1st visit to this FL State Park in my lifetime
- This was my 4th visit to a FL State Park in 2017
- This park is 4/174 for passport stamps
