I recently went on a short camping trip with my husband and another young married couple. We stayed in the tent loop at juniper springs. we were one of the only ones in the tent loop since the temperature was pretty cold for January in Florida. But It was nice the ranger came by that night at around 9 to turn on the water hoses so they wouldn't freeze, and checked on us, and again in the morning to be sure everyone was ok ( I think they only did that because it was a hard freeze warning, and we were sleeping in tents) But anyway the spring was nice not crowded that time of year (except our husbands wanted to swim in 35 degree weather.) I would think when it is warmer it would be packed. I have been to places with much larger springs, but the facilities are one of the best.

We concurred the 7 mile canoe run without tipping over, but i would not recommend it to anyone that doesn't have experience there was a lot of hard work involved in getting over logs and under them, and around trees... but it is nice if you are brave enough to try it.

Camp sites are nice, they are far enough apart that you are secluded from other campers, but close enough to walk to the bath room in the middle of the night. They all have a picnic table, a fire ring, and lantern post, and a grill.

We camped last weekend at Juniper Springs. Because we are tent campers we chose the tent loop and we were very pleasantly surprised by the size and isolation of each site. You feel like you have your own little spot of the forest. Without RVs nearby, you don't hear the hum of generators all night long. The bathrooms were a little far, but clean. The Florida Trial was pretty close to the camping and offered a beautiful hike through pine flatwoods and scrub. In terms of wildlife we saw numerous bear droppings, but not bears. We did see wild turkeys, raccoons, pileated, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers.

The springs are a short walk on a beautiful boardwalk. The water was too cool for me in October, but my kids loved jumping off the dock into the water. My only complaint is that the canoe trip has only 1 option - a 4 hour trip. I would prefer to have a shorter trip.

If you want to get amongst the locals this is the place; my daughter rescued what appeared to be a 30 stone lady out of the spring, who couldn't swim, as soon as we got there and she and her family went on to tell us now they nicked the fish for their aquarium! It's an unusual place, a freshwater spring formed into a huge pool where you can swim, dive and picnic around the side - taking care not to leave anything for bears. The water is bloody cold though, but you get used to it. There is also a boardwalk through a wilderness with an alligator at the end to greet you at an idyllic scene. We loved it.

I took my extended family (16 people in total) on the Juniper Springs canoe run which was supposed to take four hours. Instead we spent almost six hours on the river hauling our canoes over various deadfall that the National Forest Service has yet to remove since the hurricanes of 2004. I had made the run previously when it was pretty much clear of such obstacles, but this trip turned into somewhat of a Bataan death march.* For families with young children, I would say stay clear of this run (Silver Springs would be better). To add insult to injury, the park concessionaire refused to give back to us the deposits on our canoes because we arrived late at the takeout.

*I am a very experienced paddler (I own three kayaks and a canoe), and while I could have made the run in much less time, four hours was not enough for a large group of novice paddlers with young children.