I took a short road trip from my home through the panhandle. Here’s where I visited.

~ Falling Waters State Park

This 73- foot waterfall is the tallest in Florida and actually a sink hole. There are many other enormous sinks on the property as well as a large lake perfect for fishing and a few trails. The waterfall’s flow was considered to be low on the day we went so there’s not an enourmous stream but enough to get a little splashed on you from the platform.

~ Florida Caverns State Park

These caves are awesome! I was surprised to see how many ‘rooms’ there were all with different shaped structures. The colored lights make for a really interesting experience and really add to enhance the natural shadows, textures and shapes of the cave.

This is the only Florida state park with air-filled caves open to the public. You must book a tour in person to enter the caves. Our tour was about an hour long and due to Covid, the capacity per tour is ten people.

The caves are truly fascinating and our tour guide explained the history of the cave as well as how the structures form and what they were made of. We were even lucky enough to see two tiny sleeping bats and a salamander.

There is a little museum and gift shop on site that we checked out while we waited for our tour. As far as the rest of the park, it’s pretty much completely destroyed after hurricane Michael and not accessible.

~ Merritts Mill Pond Caverns

I am not entirely sure that the name of these caves are, but they are located off Merrits Mill Pond and usually only accessible underwater, however are newly exposed due to renovations. The river is drained and dammed, so this trip was super muddy as the river is extremely low in most areas and is pretty much just mud for many yards near the banks. I think it was absolutely worth the mud to see these beautiful limestone caves and literally go inside the aquifer. We launched at Cave Adventueres in Marianna and also rented a kayak from them. It was about a 10 minute paddle from there. I highly suggest you try and make it out there as soon as possible because I believe it’s filling back up and I am not too sure if this will ever be accessible in this way again during our life time.

~ Ponce De Leon Springs

Not to be confused with Deleon Springs, this spring was super cute. I really liked how they had the wall set up around the perimeter. We watched the tiniest snapper turles in the clear blue water underneath us and walked a trail along the water.

~ Blue Spring Recreation Park

This Spring was also extremely low and under renovations. There were a few people who had kayaked in and some were diving but it was eerily deserted and looked like a lot of the slides and life guard towers were unusable giving the spring a creepy post-apocalyptic vibe. I am very curious to see how this cave looks under the water but we did not swim on this trip.

~ Vortex Springs

To tell you the truth, this was a strange place. I am not sure if it was just under serious renovations after the storms or if it just was a hodgepodge of randomness thrown together. If Joe Exotic had a spring, it would be this place. This view was pretty but virtually nothing else on the property made any sense. That’s all I am going to say! Apparently, there is a very deep cave and a sunken boat here so it might be worth a trip back to see those in the summer.

~Morrison Springs

Morrison was also a really nice spring I am sad we didn’t get to swim in or drone at. It was actually a very cloudy cool evening when we visited (sky is FAKE in the first pic) but I’m sure it’s a fun place to swim during the summer especially with the floating docks.

~ Falling Creek Falls

I really loved this waterfall! It’s about ten feet high and accessible from a free public park on a very short trail. I did have to jump and climb down to get these photos but it’s a beautiful view and feels more like the mountains than Florida especially with the fall foliage.

And that wraps up my panhandle trip. I definitely saw my share of springs, waterfalls and caves.

I hope you had a w0nderful month!