{"id":4481,"date":"2015-11-30T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-06-30T16:11:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T20:11:58","slug":"oleno-state-park-ichetucknee-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/?p=4481","title":{"rendered":"Oleno State Park & Ichetucknee Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PegBridgeCrossing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We left Ocean Pond on Sunday morning about 9 AM for a short 35 drive to Oleno State Park. Over the years we have camped here at least 4 times.<\/p>\n

When we were younger we did some long bike rides but today with the soft sand and roots on the trail Peggy decided 3 miles was enough and took a short cut back over this narrow walking bridge which was build by the CCC in 1935.<\/p>\n

\"SanteFeRiverSink\"<\/a>The trail along the Santa Fe River goes around the end of the river where it disappears into the ground for 3 miles\u00a0 before reappearing downstream at River Rise.<\/p>\n

\"OlenoRiverSinkSign\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This sign explains it. The river stops here.<\/p>\n

\"SanteFeRiverSink2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our favorite place to canoe is at the nearby Ichetucknee Springs State Park. It\u2019s about 15 miles away but you don\u2019t want to go there in the summer when the 3 mile long river is full of swimmers floating on inner tubes. It\u2019s best to stay away on warm weekends also, so we paddled on Monday. We saw 5 kayakers and 2 canoes the entire day. \"IchetuckneePegPaddle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Turtle<\/a> We drove our RV to the last take-out where they have a little parking lot and access to the river. It\u2019s about 13 miles from Oleno. I\u00a0noticed that there is now a 8\u2019 wide paved bike trail that parallels the roads the entire way. It would be a long bike ride and too bad the trail isn\u2019t away from the road. Bike Trail<\/a>\"Water<\/a><\/p>\n

We saw lots of Egrets, Herons and other birds plus more tame turtles than I had ever seen anywhere. A few jumped in but most just sat there and kept an eye on us.\"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

\"JohnIchetuckneeSpring\"<\/a>It took us about 1-1\/2 hrs. paddling against the current to get to the head of the spring and less than an hour to paddle back.<\/p>\n

Temperature was in the mid-70\u2019s and partly cloudy.<\/p>\n

We are now at #9 on my planning map and tomorrow we move about 40 miles south to another Florida State Park, Paynes Prairie. It\u2019s just south of Gainesville and is a nice park with several different choices of bike trails.<\/p>\n

\"Map2<\/a><\/p>\n

One note about Florida State Parks, there is no discount for being old unless you are a FL resident and don\u2019t bother trying to get a site on the weekend without making reservations in advance. The parks south of Tampa are usually booked 11 months in advance. Those in the North maybe only a few weeks in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We left Ocean Pond on Sunday morning about 9 AM for a short 35 drive to Oleno State Park. Over the years we have camped here at least 4 times. When we were younger we did some long bike rides but today with the soft sand and roots on the trail Peggy decided 3 miles … Continue reading Oleno State Park & Ichetucknee Springs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1516trip","category-16fltrip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4481"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6902,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4481\/revisions\/6902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcpoa.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}