O’Leno State Park

We decided to make a short visit to a state park only a few hours from our house. We’ve full-timed in our RV for several years. We’ve RV’ed for a few months or a week or two. But I’m not sure if we ever camped for only 2 days before. It is funny how many things we forgot to bring along like glasses or coffee mugs (9 different things!). We survived and made do. John removed the top of a pop can so he could drink his morning coffee.

There was a small town in this area called Keno. The ministers and businessmen decided to rename it to Leno since keno is a gambling game. Over time it became a ghost town. The area became known as Old Leno and then O’Leno. It is one of the first Florida state parks.

The thing that makes this park special is the river. The Santa Fe River disappears underground, travels three miles through limestone, and then comes up and continues on to merge with the Suwannee River. We had no idea what we’d see. I was picturing a large spinning vortex as the water dropped out of site and a fountain of water as it came up. Definitely not what we saw but it was more subtle.

This suspension bridge was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930’s.

Nearby are remnants of a mill… 

The water itself is dark with tannins. It was like a mirror.

…and a pole showing the different flood levels over the years. This must be something to see since the pole is quite a bit away from the river.

An interesting part is that the small lakes here are tied to the unground water. So you can see slight currents in the water.

We liked the River Sink part the best. It was fairly close to the campsite (2 mile total walk). The river water velocity was high up to the River Sink. The signs talk about 900 million gallons of water flowing in a day.

But the whirlpool was less than what we expected. You can see debris spinning slowly around the area but it isn’t pulled under and the surface of the water is flat. Yet all of that water is flowing out from below.

The next morning I took what I thought would be a short hike. Unfortunately I got lost. So it ended up being over an hour of hiking. The thing to see on the trail was an old limestone quarry. They say the limestone was used to build chimneys.

I also saw a lot of deer (though most of them were very quick).

The River Rise is 4.5 miles from the park. Not too tough, I thought. We brought our bikes. But…we got lost again and ended up adding three miles to the trip going the wrong way around a loop. Plus, biking in sand and piles of pine needles is tough work and I didn’t plan enough water. Luckily, there was a store on the way back and John had brought money so we could enjoy a drink. We think we biked and walked (I was too tired to bike in some places) about 15 miles. We slept very well that night!

We crossed the Bellamy Road. It is part of an old road that went from St. Augustine to Pensacola back in the 1800’s.

We passed a lady who was studying the cave system below. There were seismographs all over the area that they used to monitor the grounds.

The River Rise itself was again more subtle than we expected. The water is just there. We could see some movement like a spring but all over the water not at a single point. Technically, this is a spring but really, it was just surprising that all this water could move through the rocks and just “ta-dah” it shows up.