Silver Glen Springs

Love it here a fun place for a family getaway! Huge cave in the middle, clear water and some trails to walk with boils alongside the dock you walk on the trail. They have a few essentials at a little store like candy, drinks, some floaties. They have a changing areA for convenience. And I believe it’s only $ 5 per person to get in and it’s definitely worth it! They have picnic tables throughout the park and little camp grills for convenience.

Silver Glen Springs is one of the most-​beautiful of all springs in Florida, especially for swimming and freediving. The water is almost always perfectly clear, has a minimum of aquatic vegetation, and best of all, quite frequently – especially on sunny afternoons around five – you can see many, many, many fish. Like, so many fish at times you can hard see anything else. It’s amazing.
There are some things however to keep in mind. Unlike Juniper Springs, there is not an elaborate bathroom area with showers; in fact, there are only Port-​a-​Potties and a little shack to change clothes in – for whatever reason, despite being highly-​visited, the USDA never thought to really develop facilities here. There is a small ranger’s station where they take your admission and sell a few things like ice cream bars and fins for swimming. However, there are never real rangers there but people employed by a company to run these concessions, so their knowledge of wildlife and the park seems to vary. Most are older folks and nice, but they won’t have the in-​depth knowledge of the National Forest you get from some actual park employees elsewhere.
Still, this is a very special spring. If you want to see fish and get good pictures of a spring, this is the place because when it’s sunny it’s quite beautiful. The famed Yearling Trail, which visits the actual site of a homestead that inspired Marjorie K. Rawlings’ story «The Yearling», is basically across Highway 19 from Silver Glen too, and it’s a nice trail to hike. The cemetery of the family Ms. Rawlings visited (their son actually raised a foundling fawn as in the story) is still there and some other artifacts of their homestead. If you want to see what sort of environment Florida Crackers made do with, you can see it here and you’ll be impressed by their devotion and resolve.