We are Building an Ark After Last Night 2/22/2008

Rain, rain, rain and more rain. We have never seen it rain so hard as it did last night . It started about 9:00 pm and must have lasted till about 10:30. It rained so hard you couldn't see out the windows of the RV. Talk about monsoons, well that must have been one. There was some thunder and lightening which wasn't to bad and there was no wind at all, which was good. We got off early this morning to go get my MRI and it took about 1 hour to do it so we didn't get out of the doctors until 11:00. We went and did a cache located in a small patch of woods and then it was on to WalMart for a cache and grocery shopping. Next it was on to a cache hidden in a stop sign and then one near a bunch of old old junk cars called Mr. Harvey's collection.
Then it was on to Wakulla Spring and an Earthcache located there. Wakulla Springs is one the single, largest spring systems in the world with an average of 250 million gallons of water flowing from its giant cave system to form a 9 mile long river that reaches the Gulf of Mexico. Archaeological finds at the spring, including early stone blades and Clovis spear points show evidence of humans using the spring an estimated 12,000 years ago. Fossilized remains of mastodon and other prehistoric animals demonstrate that the spring attracted plentiful game for early nomadic people. The Alalachee Indians lived in the Panhandle area in the 1500's. In 1656 The Spanish built missions in Tallahassee to bring the indians under Spanish control. In the 1700's the missions were attacked by the English colonists driving the Spanish and Apalachee Indians from the Tallahassee area. 8000 BC - 1000 AD humans became les nomadic and settled in the Wakulla Springs area. In 1528 Panfilo de Narvaez explored the area for gold and after finding none was driven from the area by the Apalachee Indians and he and most of his men perished. In the 1850's word spread about Wakulla Springs through the newspapers that described a magical spot in the woods where water gushed forth from the ground and the remains of mastodons could be seen in the spring basin. Before and after the Civil War Wakulla changed hands several times. In the 1900's it was opened to the public and many naturalists were drawn to the springs. In 1931 George Christie coordinated a major recovery of mastodon bones and turned the find into a public relations event. In 1937 the Wakulla Lodge opened and it was rumored to cost $75,000 and was built in a Mediterranean Revival style and burned soon after that and was rebuilt in 1943. In 1941 scenes from several Tarzan movies were filmed at the springs. In 1953 several scenes from the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon were filmed here. In 1966 it was named a National Natural Landmark. In 1973 on April 11th the peak water flow of 1.23 billions gallons was recorded for a single day. In 1976 some scenes from Airport '77 were filmed there. In 1993 Wakulla Springs was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1998 members of the Global Underwater Explorers established a new world record for underwater cave penetrations by pushing nearly 3 1/2 miles beyond the entrance to Wakulla's cave. There many many more interesting facts regarding this site all to detailed to mention. Wakulla Springs is home to many animals and birds including alligators manatees, limpkins, purple gallinules, moorhen, green heron, black crowned night heron, white ibis, anhinga, ospreys, suwannee cooter and white tailed deer. If your interested in the website it is www.floridasprings.org/exploration/featured/wakulla/ and click on the Interactive Spring feature link. Click on exploring Wakulla and the best section is the virtual cave dive.
Well time to feed the puppies and again a severe thunderstorm watch is out for this evening and it looks like there is a strong line of thunderstorms on its way and they are saying up to 5" of rain so maybe we better get going on that ark. Going to eat dinner after and then see if we can get some sleep tonight, if the weather radio will cooperate, as we are going into Apalachicola caching tomorrow and then meet a girl we met through caching for dinner at one of the local restaurants. Well until tomorrow we love you all and are thinking of you all the time.


All pictures are of Wakulla Springs...1-Front Sign, 2-Lodge, 3-Pavillion, 4-Springs, Boat dock & Dive platform.