Three Rivers & Suwannee River State Parks, FL

5 of 13 Jekyll Island Trip Series.

This post is about two Florida State Parks:

1. Three Rivers State Park – on Lake Seminole, which is formed by the convergence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.

2. Suwanee River State Park – is THE “Swanee River” of the “Way Down Upon Swanee River…” minstrel song by Stephen Foster in 1851 (also known as “Old Folks at Home”). My dad used to sing that song all the time on family vacations. It has been stuck in head now for about a week.

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Taken from the dock at Three Rivers State Park, Florida. That’s Georgia in the fog on the other side of the river.
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Not much to photograph at Three Rivers State Park. If you are a fisherman it would be a great place to hang out. Otherwise there’s not much to do here. The trees in the area where decimated by Hurricane Michael in 2018. This is a small campground and the long ‘asphalt’ road back to the campground looked like it had been carpet bombed. Very slow going dodging potholes. We stayed here because Florida cancelled our reservations at Falling Waters State Park. We were happy to move on to Suwannee River State Park.

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Suwannee River State Park was a big improvement over Three Rivers. This panorama is of the Suwannee (which is flowing from right to left) at the point where the Withlacoochee River joins with the Suwannee. There is a railroad bridge at the very left of the photo. The railroad bridge and a busy ferry crossing at this strategic location during the Civil War caused an interesting historical feature of the park.
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The remains of the Civil War Earthworks. An earthen “fort” is still easy to imagine.
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Gears from old paddleboat and old paddleboat “wheel”
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Clear water from Little Gem Spring flows into the Suwannee. Hiking a trail along the river sure is a lot different in Florida than it is in Indiana…

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River edge of the Suwannee. As the water gets deeper it turns orange, then red, than dark coffee colored from lots of tannins in the water.
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Becky got out her sewing machine and knocked out some quilt blocks
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Rich Reflections
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Cyprus Knees. This is probably boring stuff to Southern folk; but fascinating to Indiana folk.

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