Paddle Ocklawaha Odyssey Silver Springs To Rodman Dam, Florida

Float over Florida's most famed first magnitude spring and see monkeys dangling from cypress branches, a rich diversity of birds, while exploring an Old Florida land and waterscape on this 48-mile paddle down the Silver and Ocklawaha Rivers. Register by November 17.

Come with us on a spring-fed journey through the heart of Old Florida. Our four-day expedition will begin at Silver Springs State Park, home to Florida's most famed first magnitude spring. Paddlers will journey from the Silver to the Ocklawaha River on a gradually widening tree-canopied waterway offering views of a fantastic diversity of wildlife above and below the water’s surface. Our trip will conclude 46 miles downstream just above Rodman Dam.

At Orange Springs, musician Whitey Markle and the Swamprooters will perform their Swampgrass style of music, a mixture of bluegrass, folk, and country with a taste of old fashioned Florida Cracker thrown in for good measure. Evening presentations will highlight the ecology, culture, and history of the Ocklawaha basin and its struggle to shake off the chains of the ill-fated Cross Florida Barge Canal Project that was decommissioned 45 years ago. At Gores Landing, we will show Matt Keene's new documentary Lost Springs. The film explores themes of loss, wonder and experience in nature as it follows the course of a drawdown of the Kirkpatrick Dam’s Rodman Pool, exposing a submerged and deteriorating world normally hidden below the high waters of a purposeless dam.

For those who like to read about where they're traveling, pick up a copy of Marjory Kinnan Rawlings' 1933 novel South Moon Under to learn more about the waterscape we’ll be paddling through and set the mood for the trip.

We have room for 75 paddlers on this trip.