Kayak with Monkeys! Silver Springs State Park, Florida

A few years ago on one of my first river kayaking adventures, I mentioned to my friends that paddling through the overgrown trees made me fantasize about being somewhere more exotic like the Amazon, and I could almost see monkeys swinging through the trees around us. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I could experience exactly that only an hour away from where I live!

Silver Springs State Park in Ocala, Florida is such an awesome place. Last weekend I went camping there for the first time and had one of the best animal encounters I’ve had to date!

My only reason for wanting to explore this park was because of the rhesus macaques, so I was a little nervous when none of the state park’s websites mentioned them. My suspicion there is that as the monkeys are an invasive species that were brought here due to human negligence, that the park doesn’t want to capitalize on that infamy.

In 1938 a man named Colonel Tooey was putting together a tourist attraction for his Jungle Cruise boat ride and shipped the monkeys out to an island he built up in the middle of the Silver River. Unfortunately, he did not know that the breed of monkey he obtained could… well, swim. So it didn’t go over well, and to this day there is somewhere between 200-700 monkeys along the river!

They are super cute and fun to see, but it’s worth mentioning that they can get very aggressive and these monkeys also carry Herpes B, which can be deadly. That said, much like the alligators you can also see along the river, as long are you’re not bothering them or attempting to feed them, they’re fine to watch from a safe distance.

Not only did we get to see a few monkeys (I would’ve been happy with one or two, truly) we saw whole families of them! Our first sighting was along the paddle trail and there were at least 12 of these little guys, including moms suckling babies, and little ones getting groomed and picking insects off of each other to eat. Monkeys swung from the trees over our heads and watched us or ignored us to run and play as they pleased. We were even so lucky as to see Mama monkeys with babies hanging from their chests as they climbed trees and dropped from branch to branch. It was incredible to watch and blew my expectations out of the water.

Speaking of blowing things out of the water, we also got another huge treat: manatees! I grew up on boats in South Florida so I’ve had plenty of manatee encounters, but nothing compares to being in a kayak or paddleboard and having one of these giant sea cows materialize right beneath you! Manatees are a protected species so the law is to stay 50 feet away from them but a sheriff ranger was watching people paddling next to the animals and as long as we didn’t interfere with them, he let us take a good look.

Later, when we were paddling by ourselves way down the river, we came across two *giant*, I’m talking baby whale sized, manatees and we had them all to ourselves to watch for a while as they munched on sea grass and rose to the surface to breathe every few minutes. When they dive back into the water I can see how the legends of mermaids started from their graceful tails, but I’m not sure how sailors ever mistook their gigantic bodies for anything human-shaped.

We paddled the river 3 times in total over the weekend but we found that the best way to do it is to park a car at Ray Wayside Park, then go to the launch site at Silver Springs. We only had one car so we dropped the kayak at the launch site, drove to Ray’s, then Ubered back to the park. From there it’s about 5 miles down the river and took us about 3.5 hours with lots of stops for watching the wildlife! Some people are brave (or strong) enough to paddle up-river and then float back down but honestly, we would not have been able to accomplish that. It didn’t help that my partner and I were both sharing my small kayak due to a mishap with his trailer. It led to some sore butts but the experience was beyond worth it.

Camping was an experience all in it itself as it rained all night long on Friday and the roof of the tent developed a drip. Shout out to my boyfriend for thinking to use one of our emergency blankets (the tin-foily ones that come in some first aid kits) to bolster the tarp on top and prevented us from a slow drowning (or just waking up to all our belongings wet and musty).

Around the campsite are a bunch of trails and the Silver Springs Museum that has only a $2 admission fee. Admittedly we didn’t go to the museum, but I did take the time to walk the Sinkhole Trail on Saturday afternoon, and it was wonderful. It’s about a 2 mile loop and there are placards along the way describing some of the surroundings and wildlife you might see. This area is known to have Florida Black Bears, but I have never see one. I did, however, see a birds nest at eye level in a tree and when I stood on my tiptoes I could see a little egg. And there was a sign describing how to recognize blueberry bushes and I was able to eat 3-4. I am an absolute sucker for foraging even though I am very wary of it and so will only eat things I am 100% sure of, so that was a real treat.

It was hot and muggy, but the rain only lasted one night and our experience at the park was wonderful. I love kayaking and actually got one for Christmas last year but was only able to use it once before Corona happened so I was extra grateful to be able to get it in water 3 times this weekend.

For anyone interested in visiting, Silver Springs is also less than 15 minutes away from The Canyon Zipline and Adventure Tours and I highly recommend them as well! It definitely made for a great weekend and a much needed break.