Inner Tubing the Ichetucknee

A few weeks back, our friend Mr. Jonathan had mentioned an inner-tubing outing in Central Florida. KC-Star and I thought that it sounded fun, and wanted to give it a go. All of our schedules worked out on Saturday, so Mr. Jonathan, his daughter, and KC-Star and I headed out to the Ichetucknee State Park. The park opened at 8 am, and given that Park Rangers only let 750 people inner-tube the entire river, we needed to be there early (the river averages 5,000 inner-tubers a day). Which meant, that KC-Star and I needed to leave the house at 5:30 am (2.5 hrs drive). On a Saturday. Fortunately, we arrived there early enough (#466-#469). We rented some inner-tubes at a nearby inner-tube rental shop and then prepped ourselves (i.e. sun tan lotion) for the adventure.


The water on the Ichetucknee river is fed from a series of nine springs. The head spring of the river was declared a National Natural Landmark by the U. S. Department of the Interior. The water is approximately 73 degrees year-round. When we put our inner tubes into the water and jumped in, it was a bit chilly, but not too bad. From where we put in, we were told that it would take us approximately 3-1/2 hours to float down to the take-out point. Personally, I thought that 3-1/2 hours on an inner-tube might get old after the first hour or so, but the entire trip seemed extremely quick. There was very little paddling involved - the gentle current slowly keeps you going down the river. The actual river was fairly narrow - maybe 50 yards at it's widest. There were numerous logs and overhanging trees along the sides of the river that kept the trip interesting (you had to at least be aware enough not to bonk your head on a tree limb). The water was fairly clear, and it was shady during parts of the trip, so we weren't exposed to direct sun all of the time. We saw numerous birds, turtles, and fish. It was a lot of fun, and as it turned out, it exceeded both of our expectations. We are both ready to go back and try it again!