We woke up to a gray day under the huge live oak trees. Ted went to see when we could meet with the Park Services Specialist. Her name is Stephanie McClain and she came to our motor home about 9:45. She told us about the park and what is expected of volunteers, etc. Since we are interested in doing crafts, if we should decide to come here, we were told we needed to talk to Susan Conley. She is the ranger in charge of the gift shop and Craft Square where artisans demonstrate and talk to visitors of the park. We went to talk to Susan and she seemed enthusiastic about having Ted build a kayak in the open air barn. We told her we would keep in touch as we were not planning on being in Florida next winter.
Open Air Barn
Once we got done looking at all the neat crafts for sale in the gift shop, we went over to the museum. They had eight wonderful dioramas depicting Stephen Foster's songs as well as several old pianos, some that were played by Foster himself. Stephen Foster never came to Florida and picked the name of the river in Old Folks at Home, the state song of Florida, from an atlas. The desk where he finished writing the song was also in the museum. We watched a short film about the area around White Springs and returned to the motor home for lunch.
Museum
After lunch we were going to walk to the carillon building but it started to sprinkle as we were leaving so took the car. The carillon building is mostly marble inside and is a memorial to Stephen Foster with original artifacts as well as reproductions. There were two more three dimensional dioramas. The one below had the boy jumping, the banjo player plucking and the chicken pecking at the watermelon. All the dioramas had some thing moving...most often a riverboat.
Diorama
The bells in this carillon are tubular unlike the ones in Bok Tower and other carillons we have seen. Hopefully, the pictures depict how they are set up and something about them.
Since we already had the car, we decided to drive down by the canoe launch in the park.....obviously no hiking and no launching.
Then we stopped at White Sulfur Springs and the water was up to the 4th level of the spring house. Ted's picture was taken on March 14th showing Jack Roberts in front of the spring house. The river in actually on the other side of the spring house from where we were standing.
White Sulfur Springs
Below is Jack Roberts on the river side of the Spring House on Mar 10th.
Next we drove out to the public ramp on Rt. 41 where the Magnificent Seven from 27/80 began their 70-mile Suwannee River trip. We rode around the area a bit then came back to the campsite.
Below is the boat ramp at the start of our Suwannee River Trip on Mar 10th.
What a difference in just 6 weeks!
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