For the travel snob, a trip to Florida is the cultural equivalent of a trip to the mall. In fact, many of the tourists who head to Florida hit the 24-hour Wal-Marts first, even before mortgaging their homes for a week at Disney.
But, hidden behind the theme parks, there is another Florida. A nature-lover’s Florida. And one of the best ways to explore it is by houseboat.
It takes under an hour to drive from Orlando to the marina in De Land, on the St. Johns River. It is an odd area, overgrown and lush, with swamps and willows dripping Spanish moss. It combines the laid-back-to-the-point-of-inertia safety regulations of the Southern U.S., with vast tracks of beautiful and varied parkland. Florida as a nature wonderland? Believe it.
When our family of four arrived, it was raining. Not hard, just an annoying drizzle. A cheerful blond girl checked us in at the main building then took us over to our boat, the Chief 4.
Boat? The thing was a floating two-bedroom apartment, complete with fully equipped kitchen, air-conditioning, shower and front porch barbecue.
We transferred our Wal-Mart supplies (some things never change) from the car to the boat, then watched the 20-minute-long instructional video we found on top of Chief 4’s VCR. Or, we tried to. We couldn’t get the machine to work and had to call in a technician. He “fixed” it by turning it on.
We settled into the Chief’s sofa and watched the friendly man on the tape vaguely mention a generator, motor, septic system, bilge pump, oil levels and other sundry details. When it was over, we looked at each other. Was that it? Were we supposed to just take this expensive, floating liability off into the Florida outback? We, who couldn’t even get the VCR to play the instructional video?
Yep. That was the idea. The blond girl waved goodbye from the dock, and with a lot of grinding of propellers and frantic consultations of our “Captain’s Manual,” we chugged off into the hinterlands, the theme from “Deliverance” ringing in our ears.
It had taken us so long to find the generator switch that, by the time we got under way, there was only an hour of daylight left. We had no choice; we would have to spend the night anchored in an offshoot of the St. Johns called Dead River.
The most terrifying aspect of Dead River was trying get the family to co-operate enough (one with the front anchor, one with the back anchor, one steering and one shouting instructions over the chatter of the engine) to anchor our 14-by-52-foot metal home without ramming into the cypress trees or ending up in the middle of a shipping lane. In the dark. It was a bit like one of those survive-or-die corporate rural excursions.
When the last rope was attached to the final cleat, we did what any group of urban warriors could be expected to do. We took a look outside, noted how peaceful and beautiful it was, then turned on the TV and made dinner in the microwave.
Dad was the first one up the next morning. I found him sitting on a chair on the front porch, his feet up on the picnic table. “We had visitors,” he said.
I looked around. We were in a shallow, narrow, dead-end river, surrounded by bird-heavy cypress trees. There was no real shoreline, just marshland mixed imperceptibly with fallen, rotting trees and cypress roots. It was neither swimmable nor wadeable, though the lushness was beautiful.
Dad explained that he had been fussing around the kitchen just after he woke up when he saw two large, rangy dogs sniffing around on our front deck. They didn’t seem dangerous but, to dad’s expert canine eye, one of them looked “sneaky.”
Sure enough, Sneaky Dog had started to cock a rear leg. “It was trying to scent mark my bloody boat.” Indignant, Dad chased them off. They jumped into the water and disappeared into the swampy underbrush.
Given the remoteness of our little dead-end river, the whole thing seemed very odd. Finally we settled on the coolest option and decreed them wild swamp dogs.
We had breakfast and prepared to move off. Sister was dispatched to the rear to liberate the anchor. We heard a shout and rushed out back to see if she was OK. She was staring very intently at a spot about 5 feet off our rear. I followed her eyes. There, lazing on a log, just next to where we had thrown out anchor in the dark the night before, was an enormous alligator.
Once we learned how to spot them, we saw so many gators over the next few days that we didn’t bother pointing them out to each other unless they had six legs or could do the Macarena. But your first is always special. So we stared, took an embarrassing number of pictures, and very, very carefully pulled up our anchor.
We followed our waterproof map north, up the St. Johns River toward Lake George. We were heading toward Silver Glen Springs, one of the few spots in the area where the water was gator-less and warm enough to swim in.
Human habitation came in clusters along the river. Long stretches of cypress shoreline would break to allow for a marina, a restaurant, a gas station. Before and after these would be maritime suburbs of lovely houses, each with its own pier.
We arrived at the entrance for Silver Glen Springs late in the afternoon. As we boated up the little river that led to the spring, the water became perceptibly clearer, the bottom shallower and sandier. We rounded the final bend and, instead of seeing the fountainhead of the spring in all its gurgling glory, we saw the rear end of another houseboat.
We slowly pulled alongside. The mother of the family of four in the other houseboat, Ruth, shouted out to us that their engine had broken down. Could we help?
We tied the houseboats flank to flank and Dad went over to have a look. Dad got their boat started and, in a fit of holiday spirit, the eight of us joined forces and shared a big dinner aboard our boat. Our new neighbors were from California–lively and delightful. Over coleslaw and barbecued steak, we started swapping stories of life on the river. After tallying our respective gator counts, dad described our run-in with the wild swamp dogs.
“Oh,” said Ruth, “that explains it.”
She said that on the way up the river, a weird-looking back-country guy in a small outboard motor boat had pulled alongside them. He was carrying a shotgun and looked mighty hostile. He had shouted out: “You got my dogs?” When Ruth and her family said no, the man wasn’t convinced. He wanted to board their boat to search for his missing “huntin’ dogs.” Ruth refused, and it got pretty dodgy for a while. Finally, the man sullenly motored off.
Mystery solved. It wasn’t dancing mascots or sparkly rainbow castles but, in its own way, finding the truth behind our smelly, grubby swamp dogs was a Disney-perfect ending to our Florida vacation.
IF YOU GO
RENTALS
These are the two main houseboat rental marinas in De Land (we have rented from both; they are pretty much the same):
Hontoon Landing Resort and Marina, 2317 River Ridge Rd., De Land, FL 32720; 800-248-2474 or 904-734-2474; www.hontoon.com.
Holly Bluff, 2280 Hontoon Rd., De Land, FL 32720; 800-237-5105 or 904-822-9992; fax 904-822-6978; www.hollybluff.com.
At both Hontoon and Holly Bluff, boats range in size from modest four-sleepers to enormous ten-sleepers (complete with four separate staterooms and water slide from the roof to the gator-infested waters). There ayre three price categories: weekend, mid-week and whole week. Holly Bluff advertises a low season (December to February), mid-week boat that sleeps four for $700 with a Monday pickup, Thursday return.
TRIP OPTIONS
We went north to Silver Glen Springs, but just to the south of the marinas is Blue Spring State Park, one of the few wintering grounds of the manatee. You can dock your houseboat and walk or swim up the spring run. If you time it right, you’ll see a herd of sea cows. Blue Spring State Park also rents cabins. Call 904-775-3663.
BASS MASTERS
Also, this area is the self-proclaimed “Bass Capital of the World.”
