LIFE RAFT At Ginnie Springs, Florida

While camping at Ginnie Springs, Florida, we set off a LIFE RAFT from an airplane and go thru all the contents while floating in the Spring! The beautiful Ginnie Springs outside of Gainesville, Florida is one of the best travel destinations for kayaking and free diving in the whole state. Privately owned, Ginnie Springs offers 7 main springs including the infamous Devils Ear cave diving experience. This is one of the few Florida Springs we have found where you can come by boat, tube or even kayak. We like to show up at Ginnie Springs Campground a bit early to find an optimal camping spot as it is first come first serve. If you are lucky, you can camp on your own spring! Typically, we find our campsite and set up camp on Thursday before the Gainesville crowd shows up. The actual float with no stops can be done in about an hour from top to bottom so you can do run after run. The campground store offers floats for rent, they even have a store with food and drink and a small restaurant. There are several campsites to pick from. Some are fully connected for RVs with water and power while others may just have water and then there are off grid camp areas with shower houses pretty much everywhere. Our favorite spots are right on the spring itself. We like to drive the truck up to the top of the float otherwise known as upstream and float downstream to our camp stopping and all of the individual free flowing springs on the way downstream. There are 3 springs in particular that you can actually free dove down into and challenge your breathe holds. The deepest one, “Devil’s Ear”, cave divers experience daily. This specific spring has a giant hole like that goes down about 23 feet and then opens into a giant cave if you have the breathe. This is where the cave divers enter and explore the labyrinth of tunnels thru this cave system. This is definitely for cave divers only with experience and partners. Many bass, small tarpon and sometimes a small alligator can be seen floating this spring. Once we reach our campsite, we pull out either our floats or kayaks and ride back up the trailhead on our bikes to retrieve our truck. Have no fear because of you are not camping or didn’t bring a bike, it is no problem as you can simply walk back upstream to any one of 7 drop points for floating downstream. This is what actually makes Ginnie so popular and inviting as there are many options to your float. Camping at night is always beautiful year round as all of the springs stay 72 degrees all year so the air is never hot and uncomfortable at night. Camp fires are permitted and while they sell firewood at the store or even roadside on the drive in, normally fallen trees can be found to make a fire around the park. One of our favorite travel destinations for sure as we have spent our past two anniversaries camping spring side.