It was mid November, 2016. Four months before this Lynda had applied for the Deland Art Festival.  At the same time we snapped up a camp site at Blue Springs State Park as places to stay get few and far between during November. The park is about 15 min. from Deland so it would make a good place to stay for the festival. Unfortunately we didn’t get into the fair. They can host about 150 artists and about 300 applied. Big time prizes, so big time artists apply.

In any case, we had this reservation at the park, so we decided to go anyway. We’ve never been there before, but many people told us it was beautiful . It was a very nice park with a spring that runs out into the St. John’s river. It’s a popular dive spot as the spring itself is very deep. Manatees come into the spring in the winter as the water is warmer than the river. During the months that there are no manatees, you can swim in the spring, its a constant 73 degrees, brrr.

Blue Springs was popular place even in the past. Steamboats used to come here and after that trains. The family that owned it built up quite a trade. The area has lots of animals; manatees, turtles, birds, etc. You can go out on a tour boat or rent kayaks and canoes to go out on the St. John. It is a pleasant place to roam around. And the campsite has brand new bathrooms. What luxury!

There is one down side, a train passes by right next to the campsites about every four hours and toots it’s horn as it goes thru the rail crossing, even at 4 AM.

It is roughly a half hour to the beach, which like Daytona they can drive cars on. You can see Daytona Light across the estuary. Not the soft white sands of the west coast, but it’s a beach.