Wakulla Springs riverboat
— the slow boat past the cypress and the gators.
Not only on a wall.
Wakulla Springs riverboat, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A flat-bottomed riverboat pushing slowly down the first three miles of the Wakulla River from the headspring dock. The tour runs about forty minutes, eight or nine guests on a bench seat, a park ranger calling out anhingas drying their wings, an osprey on the snag, the alligator that lives under the third bend. In winter, manatees hold in the warm springwater near the dock. The cypress knees crowd the bank where the river starts to widen. The boat turns at the limit of navigable water and idles back the same way it came. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Wakulla Springs riverboat is a ranger-narrated tour that leaves the dock at the headspring inside Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park, fifteen miles south of Tallahassee. The boat works the first three miles of the Wakulla River downstream from the spring vent before turning at the limit of the protected zone and returning. Tours run roughly forty minutes, year-round, weather and water level permitting. The park's older glass-bottom boat operates separately over the headspring itself when water clarity is high enough, typically in cooler months.
The river leaves the headspring at a steady 69 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit and runs clear-green where it has not yet taken on tannin from upstream swamps. American alligators sun on the cypress logs along the bank; anhingas, limpkins, and white ibis work the shallows; ospreys nest in the snags. In winter, West Indian manatees come up the river from the Gulf at St. Marks to hold in the warm springwater near the boat dock. The cypress and tupelo gallery along the run closes the sky to a narrow strip overhead.
The riverboat departs from the headspring dock on a schedule set daily by the park; tickets are sold at the dock house and at the lodge, separate from the per-vehicle park entry fee. Boats hold around forty guests on bench seating; reservations are not taken, so on busy weekends the line forms early. The glass-bottom boat runs only when river visibility allows, which is most reliable in the cooler, drier months from late autumn through spring. Both tours are narrated by Florida Park Service rangers.
