Rainbow Springs

Michelle and I went on one last little day trip before the baby comes this week and adventures like these become fewer and further between, at least for the next year or two. Of course, we stopped to eat first, at a diner where several folks sounded way too much like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Michelle admitted that it is harder to eavesdrop on southerners because it's simply harder to pick apart the drawl, especially when it's tangled in the fast-talking variety of north Florida or the panhandle region.



We went to Rainbow Springs, which is a very large and popular spring about 45 minutes southwest of Gainesville. The spring itself is as nice as any of the others in the area with water visibility of up to 225 feet. The unique beauty of this place as a park is really the result of phosphate mining - the stuff used in fertilizer production. The visitor's center is apparently built on some of the 'earth removed' to give you a higher-than-normal view of the spring and surrounding vegetation. With the greens and blues in the water and the reds, oranges, and purples in the azaleas, it's easy to see why they put rainbow in the name.