Juniper Run Canoe Trip, Florida, Ocala National Forest- Ending Segment

This is a short segment of one of my favorite things to do in Florida: Juniper Run. Juniper Run is an awesome canoe trip which begins at Juniper Springs, in the Ocala National Forest, just a short drive east of Ocala, Florida, on Rt 40. See some of my other vids of diff segments of Juniper. Just do a YouTube search for Juniper Run!

This particular video shows a litte of what the canoe trip looks like near the end of the run. Towards the beginning, and for the first half, the stream is somewhat narrow and constricted, sometimes no more than 10 - 12 feet in width. In this video, you can see that the breadth of the stream is much wider, often 50 - 100 feet in width. The stream seems to open up 2/3rds of the way through, and progresses from a narrow stream to one of a much wider width, as the stream enters what looks like a flooded prairie-like wilderness.

In the beginning, palm trees are on both sides of you, and other trees are so close, you can iterally reach out and touch them. Also, lots of Cypress trees create a jungle-like canopy over the stream. But towards the end, at about 2/3rds the way through, the stream opens up, as I mentioned before, into this flooded prarie-like wilderness, and the trees are not as close. You leave the jungle-like scenery for an open prarie-type scenery, and the tall trees become more distant.

The video was recorded on January 18th, when it had reached about 70 degrees in the part of Florida where we were. By comparison, my hometown of Cincinnati reached a high of about 18 degrees that day.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Juniper
• Run
• Springs
• Florida
• Ocala
• National
• Forest
• Canoe
• Trip
• Ride
• Pam
• Trees
• Cypress

[Foxmuffinz4332]

im going this weekend! and i heard theres otters!

[CincinnatiGifts]

There may just be. I personally don't remember seeing any, but I do specifically remember seeing gators.

Definitely take a digital cam with you so you can take any vids if you happen to see any gators.

[CincinnatiGifts]

I was in this area most recently in April '09, and saw no signs whatsoever of a devastating fire.

Although there are signs of previous fires, whether natural or man-made, I would hardly classify the area as destroyed or all burned up. Quite the contrary, actually.

[bluenote335]

Looks very fun - is there ever any fear of being attacked by gators or other animals that could maul you in a millisecond?

[CincinnatiGifts]

Minimal danger, although danger exists nonetheless. Gators are naturally fearful of man, and something about a large 20 foot long metal canoe with two people inside seems to be, understandably, quite intimidating to a gator.

I make this run regularly, and have seen small gators along this run. They pretty much keep to themselves, and hide or submerge themselves whenever possible to avoid detection.

Despite the risk, I'd encourage anyone to make this awesome canoe run!

[mistersarcastik]

Mmm, I love this run. Thanks for the post. Makes me miss Florida...sad to know all this got burned up.

[CincinnatiGifts]

Burned up?

[johnshepherd2011]

beautiful...absolutely stunning; i soo want to go there

[ZmajSnoshaj]

It's lands and marshes like this that stand in the most danger of BP's catastrophic greedy failure. Beautiful video though, thumbs up!

[SweepSpot]

all that grass on the sides of the river is caused bye pollution, i've got it here also.

[mistersarcastik]

Bad forest fires took out most all of the Juniper Wilderness Area, or so my dad tells me from back in Ocala.