White Springs: A forgotten destination

Collage of images of the rural city of White Springs, Florida - Photos: Still Gravity.
The old city of White Springs, Florida - License our images here.        

Sleepy place at the banks of the Suwannee River that once was a popular destination. A sign over the rusting store by the only traffic light in town says that the business opened in 1865. Nearby is the old bathhouse that used to attract travelers from the north coming for the waters of a mineral spring to recover their health - here you can see the bathhouse at its best times. Now White Spring is a small rural city. Even the barber left. 

Collage of images of the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park - Photos: Still Gravity.
Suwannee River, the old bathhouse, and the state park with its musical tower. 

We camped in the neighboring Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. The park is at the banks of the Suwannee River - a blackwater river. It has a carillon tower and a museum about Stephen Foster, "the father of American music" and author of one of the top Western songs of all times: "Oh! Susanna" - here you can see an old performance and here the original version with the racist lines that were removed later. Close by is Big Shoals State Park, the place with the largest whitewater rapids in Florida. There are more trails there. 

Check a short video from this trip - we were coming from Atlanta. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chekika: Forgotten spot of Everglades National Park

Image
During our last visit to Chekika ( map ), we found closed roads and dilapidated buildings. This was our fourth time here. Little by little, nature is coming back. Wilderness taking over what was always its property.           The closed entrance to the Grossman Hammock -  License our images here .  Everglades National Park closed indefinitely the Chekika Day Use Area in 2013. They claimed budget constraints. One year later, Chekika was on the news when a juvenile Nile crocodile was removed from the area - the animal was captured in a canal north from the Grossman Hammock. Two others were caught in 2009 and 2012 further to the east. You know the script with invasive species: they escaped or someone released them.  The Everglades already have the mighty Pythons running wild. I don’t want to imagine the River of Grass ruled by “man-eaters” crocodiles that can reach up to 17 feet. That would be madness. 
»

Google search and the little blog

Image
Many small websites are going dark like the sands of the desert at nightfall -  License our images here .   Little blogs are dying. They are jailed in a dark and remote dungeon of Google organic search, the non-index dungeon. The mighty gatekeeper, like Saturn , is devouring its children. Betrayed for money, the good old-fashioned blogs are the collateral damage of their "helpful" content update. Long gone is that 2004 when Loren Baker wrote: Google likes Blogs. Blogs do well in Search Results Listings on Google. This is because Blogs contain fresh content and are richly interlinked, despite their relatively small audiences. Some would go so far as to say that Google over-represents Blogs. (Source:  What if Google didn't like blogs? ") That's ancient history. A jump to 2022 shows a different picture. According to Sandy Maguire: The Internet is dominated by a few big websites. Out of social, the amateur opinion is vanished. (Source: " Why Is the Web So Monoto
»

The last hike before the accident

Image
Cheaha Falls: A tiny waterfall in the mountains of Alabama -  License our images here .    After an easy mile of hiking through the Chinnabee trail, we reached the little waterfall.  The water was pretty low for a summer. We expected something bigger. A real waterfall, not a shower. But anyway, it's a cute waterfall with a tranquil pool at its base. We didn't swim, but it's said that many locals do.  Last picture of C before the accident.  The best part was that we were the only ones there. C seated on a big flat rock and grabbed a snack from her blue backpack.  She loves these quiet places. Immediately, she got lost into herself surrounded by the sounds of nature and the smooth hammering of falling water over ancient rocks. Who knows what she was thinking. I didn't.   We left for another day the hike down to Devil's Den Falls and Lake Chinnabee. There was time for them. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. We had some days to spend camping in this forest .  How coul
»