Triple N and Bull Creek

I actually only had 2 ½ miles to hike today but ended up hiking 12 ½. A couple of weekends ago when I backpacked the Three Lakes to Bull Creek section with Grant we opted to hike the shorter white trail back to the car on our final day. Last week Ian and I had hiked the longer orange blazed trail, but had not been able to get as close to the Forever Florida fence (where the orange and white trails connect) as I anticipated. So that left me a 2 ½ mile hike to connect the two. Today Ian started his make up hike of the 40 or so miles I have hiked but he missed. We hatched a plan to drop him about 12 miles down trail, ending with the same fenceline to car miles that I need to hike. While he hiked through, rather than just sit in the car and read/snooze I decided to hike the Florida Trail loop hike in the nearby Triple N Ranch WMA.

The loop hike is a great little hike through flatland scrub and along the banks of Crabgrass Creek. The entire loop is well blazed, grass sections were recently mowed, and some recent maintenance done on the center part of the loop. However the creek section was very rough hard scrambling. The blazes are clear, but traveling between the blazes was often challenging. In several places I actually exclaimed “You’ve got to be kidding”. “How?”, when I saw the location of the next blaze. The area was very lush and could be a very pleasant hike, but I spent too much time and effort worrying about navigating and footing to be able to enjoy the surroundings fully. The trail is only a couple of years old, and sparsely used, so hopefully eventually it will become better. I was obviously the first person through in quite some time, evidenced by the complete lack of foot tread, and the massive amounts of spiderweb “condos” across the trail. I ate more than my fair share of web today, and had one little freak out moment when I missed seeing a low web, walked into it and on looking down saw it’s massive occupant, stunned, but crawling calmy across the bare flesh of my abdomen! Eeek!

It actually took me about 3 ½ hours to complete the loop, mainly due to the very slow going along the creek and the extra time I took to take photos of spiders. Next I moved over a couple of miles to the Bull Creek WMA for that final 2 ½ mile stretch, which of course would actually be 5 miles in and out. We had timed the day to finish at about the same time, so I expected to pass Ian somewhere as I was running a little late. Talk about timing: As I approached the fenceline stile from the south, Ian came over it while I was about 30 feet away! We drank a couple of cups of coffee to celebrate my finishing the Eastern Corridor took a couple of photos, and finished the hike back to the car.

View more photos in my Picasa album

Seminole State Forest

A great couple of days hiking, and probably the warmest we have had so far on the eastern corridor. It was a couple of very contrasting days. The first, along nice level bicycle/horse trail and some beautifully manicured trail through Seminole State Forest. We came across a ranger out looking for invasive plants, and spent a very pleasant hour chatting with him, and then I inadvertently added a mile or so of hiking by chasing down a blue blaze for a spring. I eventually gave up, and the extra miles don’t count anyway. The afternoon was back into deep forest and a refreshing change from all the paved walking recently. It made us both look forward to getting into the northern forests next month.


The second day though, was when it all went downhill! Towards the middle of the day we passed through recently burned area, where there was also storm damage from a tornado last spring. Someone had re-blazed the trail with orange tape since the fire. It was a little confusing to follow in places where the taping did not quite match the few unburned blazes, but was followable. Unfortunately, when we reached the storm damaged area it had been marked for logging out the damaged trees, and every tree over about 6 inches diameter which was not to be logged was also marked with orange tape!. That made for an impossible to follow trail. Eventually, after wandering around in circles for an hour or so we just decided on a north and west course until eventually we bumped into the blazed trail beyond the damaged area.

We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, but saw lots of good prints: bears and a small cat in two different areas, and several areas where flocks of wither turkeys or cranes had spent some time walking the trail.

View more photos in my Picasa album

Bull Creek to Tosahatchee

We’re filling in the road walk between Bull Creek WMA and Tosahatchee Reserve. It’s about 30 miles total so we decided to go easy on ourselves and out feet and split it into 3 short days.

We started out with a couple of miles through Bull Creek, unfortunately we couldn't get the car in as far as I would have liked tostart the hike. I was hoping to get in to the point where the trail crosses into Bull Creek from Forever. When I hiked up to here a few weeks ago with Grant we took the white blazed connector back to the car, so now I have a tiny 2 ½ miles "hikelet" of Bull creek still to hike!

The trail itself was a little rough through the palmetto, long grass and cypress swamps, but nice to have a whole day off the roads again. We saw several hunters, and some very close shots, but no wildlife to speak of, just a couple of tiny frogs, several clumps of pitcher plants and some of the joys of winter hiking in Florida, wildflowers. In the last 3 miles at the northern end of Bull Creek the grass was high and the mosquitoes very large and voracious.

Exiting the woods on Thanksgiving morning, we were now in for the long road walk. We took our Thanksgiving lunchbreak on the level grassy bank by the road. While eating lunch I noticed a large black spider investigating my boots. It looked like a miniature version of a fake plastic spider with bright green fangs. Only it was real! It was quite placid while I shoed it around trying to get a photo, however when it spotted Ian’s lunch mat it took off in that direction, and as it reached it it turned into attack mode.

I haven’t seen Ian move that fast in a while, but I didn’t have to wait long for a repeat. Immediately after setting out for the afternoon, Ian suddenly stopped moving forward and backed up very rapidly. I thought it was probably another spider until I heard a rattle. Coiled right in front of him was a large rattle snake, as thick around as my forearm. He was quite defensive, hissing and pulling himself up, so we never saw him stretched out, but I would guess he was about 4 feet long. That sure made us look where we were putting our feet for the remainder of the afternoon.

A little further down the road we saw our 4th hawk of the day. It was quite an exciting nature walk for being beside a road. We finally made it back to the car, and drove to Moss Park for the annual Florida Trail Thanksgiving campout dinner. We were very late after all the delays of the day, but thankfully they had saved us food. And it was good.

The remainder of the hike was all roads. Not very pretty, but a pleasant enough walk considering it was alongside a couple of quite busy highways. Fortunately the grass sides were wide, and mainly fairly level. We did have a little “Ianism moment” when almost to the end of the road walk, he, for some strange reason decided he hadn’t hiked enough miles down SR520. We were taking a break at the junction of 520 and Yates where the trail changed direction. The blazes were not entirely clear where to cross the road and change direction, but the map for some reason shows a walk down one road and a complete U turn back again down the other. Guess who had to walk it all the way down to the next junction just in case there was a blaze down there? As I continued northbound and turned to watch him “making miles” I saw a SOBO blaze indicating that the trail turned directly onto 520 there, but he apparently had already made up his mind to walk down 520 and back up Yates. Gotta love him!

View more photos in my Picasa album

Catching up in southern Ocala NF

I'm in the southern half of Ocala National forest. Ian has already hiked this section at the beginning of last year’s 70/70 hike, when I could not join him until Juniper, so I am playing catchup. There was a weekend gathering of hikers from whiteblaze.net at Juniper Springs this weekend, so I decided to join them for the camping and hike around 10 miles a day to complete this missing piece.

For my first 10 miles section into Juniper, Dawn, another whiteblaze hiker offered to drive down to the trail crossing with me and return my car to Juniper. It was a rather late start, around 2:20pm, but with a steady pace, and only 2 short breaks I just managed to return to Juniper as it got dark. I had to stop at 5:20 pm to put a long sleeve sweater on, despite sweating from hiking so fast. A cold front is passing through Florida and as soon as the sun went down it got cold very quick.

On Saturday, joining me hiking were four other participants from the whiteblaze group: Brian, Robert, Michael and 9 year old James. We had planned to start out by 11am for a fairly easy day, but due to my bad navigation we took the wrong FS road heading between the trailheads and ended up burying Brian’s car in a too sandy road. Michael, Robert and I were able to push him out quite easily, but it made for a slight delay in the start time. It was actually 11:45 by the time we got started. I was confident that our youngest hiker James could do the 10 miles, but was rather concerned that we could keep up the pace well enough to get finished by dark.

As it happened James led us off at a good 2mph pace. We took breaks every 90 mins and gave James and Michael a 10 – 15 minute head start after each break, and when he slowed a little towards the middle of the hike we faster hikers took the lead, but just enough to get in front a little way to give him encouragement to keep up, but also keeping he and his father in earshot so we didn’t get split up, or discourage him. It worked well and we maintained a great pace, actually finishing the hike in around 4 ½ hours. Way to go James!

We saw several hunters today while hiking, and at one stage had to circle a dry lakebed with hunters standing around their trucks on the opposite side, which was rather intimidating being right in their line of fire. Thank goodness for safety orange caps and vests. The hike was completed without incident, and we came out with several bags of garbage that we had picked up over the course of the afternoon.

My last hiking day was solo again, as almost everyone from the whiteblaze gathering has gone home. Brian (a different one from yesterday) is taking a break from his ECT thru hike to rest up an injured ankle. He can’t hike with me, though he’d like to, but he has agreed to help me with the car shuttle, following me to Farles Campground to leave my car, then dropping me at the Alexander Springs rod crossing where we finished our hike yesterday. Thanks Brian.

It was a very short hike, and much warmer than the previous two days, but still quite pleasant in the shaded forest. I past a couple of hunters, and a pack of rather noisy hunting dogs, then their frustrated owner tracking them, but there was not much else of excitement for the day.

So now I've caught up with all the miles that Ian has hiked and I missed. He still needs to hike a chunk of Three Lakes and Prairie Lakes that I have hiked and he missed. He was supposed to do some of it while I was in Europe last month, ut that didn't happen. Of course, even when he does catch up the missing East Corridor miles, he'll still be about 200 miles behind me in trail miles as he has decided not to hike the Western Corridor, which I have almost completed. It is not necessary to hike both side though for the Florida trail thru hike. I just chose to do both. Once Ian is caught up on the Eastern side we will move north to complete the remainder of the trail heading westward to Pensacola.

View more photos in my Picasa album

Urban Hiking

We've reached the southeastern outskirts of Orlando, and spent the past three days hiking round the eastern side of the city on a combination of rural and suburban streets, bike paths, and a refreshing foray through Little Big Econ State Forest. We have both done previous work hikes and day hikes, so it seemed like “home territory”.

The hiking was good, despite being predominantly paved. We both dislike hiking on paved surfaces as continually placing your feet in the same position makes you more prone to blisters. The route took us through Chuluotta before joining the Flagler rail trail and into Little Big Econ State Forest. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in the shady forest, and especially nice to cross the bridge over the Econ and see the river back in it’s banks without having done too much damage to the area (we kayaked the river back in August when it was in a high flood, which effectively buried the bridge we crossed today).

Out of Little Big Econ we hiked into Oviedo. On the way in we were stopped by an Orlando Parks and Receation dept mower who had seen us stopped for lunch yesterday about 10 miles south, and on seeing us again couldn’t believe we would have walked “all that way”. He was totally disbelieving when we explained to him about the FL Trail and showed him the maps and blazes. In Oviedo we stopped for lunch at our favorite restaurant there. So there are some advantages to hiking in the city, more people and more food!

After lunch the trail picked up the paved bike trail again. We followed it for the next couple of days on and off. There are places where the bike trail was not yet completed where we had to divert off on to a local road. One road took us right past Big Tree Park, so we stopped there for a break and visited the “big tree”, the Senator, a 3500 year old 110ft Cypress tree. Actually, it’s only 2/3 of a cypress tree, the top 50 feet or so was apparently blown off by a 1925 hurricane. Later that day we stopped off at the Urban Café for lunch. It was a new business, and the owner was very accommodating of us, in our sweaty hiker gear and our packs. He took a photo for his wall of fame, and we told him all about the Florida Trail running right by his door.

Back on the outskirts of Orlando again, this time on the northeast side, we crossed Interstate 4 on a nice new purpose built recreation bridge. I know that’s not a cheap way to get trails off the roads, but it sure is nice to see the money being spent and the effort being made for the purpose of recreation. Orlando has many good long stretches of bicycle trail and is obviously attempting to connect them all together. We saw a new piece of trail and bridge being built outside Big Tree park and crossed another trail bridge after the café, as well as the one yesterday. While I would prefer to be hiking in the forests and fields, there is not much of that left in the Metro area of Orlando, so a nice shaded bicycle trail with a well trimmed, mainly level grass border, and safe road crossings is the next best thing.

The low point of this hike was returning to Ian’s car parked one day at Barr Street to find a mindless act of juvenile vandalism. Someone had deliberately backed up to his vehicle, then peeled out I the mud of the parking lot causing the vehicle to get covered in mud. If this had happened by accident it would be no big issue, but you could plainly see from the skid marks in the mud that there would have been no reason for a car to be backed up in that position unless to cause mayhem. Fortunately there is no permanent damage, and Ian took the whole episode rather calmly, I thought. It just goes to show how low some people will go for a moment of mindless entertainment.

View more photos in my Picasa album

Backpacking with a new friend

This past weekend I spent backpacking with Grant, a recent acquaintance from whiteblaze.net.He is planning an Appalachian Trail thru hike next year and wanted to do a few shakedown hikes. He lives near the Prairie Lakes area which I haven't hiked yet so we decided to hike from the southern East/West Corridor split point to Bull Creek.

One thing we had not counted on was it being the first weekend of hunting season in Three Lakes and Bull Creek, but we ran into a Ranger as we left the car and he said that we should be OK as long as we were visibly orange, didn't hike at dusk or dawn and camped only in the established backpacker campsites. Great advice, except it was dusk already and there was no way we could make it into the first campsite before dark! Fortunately there was a convenient decent place to camp just past the road. We assumed we were close enough to the road to be safe, and there really wasn't much else we could do except hike in the dark anyway!

Our "campsite" was a decent enough place to camp, complete with a log to sit on, a flat space for my tent and two conveniently spaced trees for Grant to hang his hammock. We were a little concerned about the stealth camping, but decided we would be up shortly after first light and get on our way suitably garbed in blaze orange shortly after light. We heard surprising few hunting sounds before light. The most obvious hunting sound was the approach of a truck, or ATV, and then a very loud and very bad fake turkey call. We both laughed and commented on how unrealistic it sounded and no animal was likely to fall for that. The sound of the same vehicle driving away was the next thing we heard.

We had a good hike, but seperated briefly on a roadwalk stretch connecting the Three Lakes area to Forever Florida. Unfortunately, in the few minutes we were out of each others' sight we took different paths and ended up losing each other for the remainder of the afternoon. I knew I was on the trail, and as the afternoon got later, and not having seen Grant's footprints in quite some time I stopped to wait. At least in Forever Florida there is no hunting, so I felt safe hunkering down by the trail. Grant eventually caught me up, having taken a detour to get some ice water from the restaurant at Forever Florida. By this time though his feet were severely hurting, and there was very little chance we would make it to our intended campsite before dark. As it was over the border of the Bull Creek WMA we were fairly sure there would be very active hunting there, so reassessed our plans.

Forever Florida is an eco preserve that allows tourists to stay in cabins or camping on their grounds. They have a small camping area that backpackers can use if paying guests are not using it. We decided to give it a try. On the way we passed several deer in the road (the toour bus drivers seed the roads with corn as they drive) and a pygmy rattle snake. We found the campground empty except for a Forever Florida cowboy that was living in the campground temporarily until more permanent accomodation could be provided. He was very agreeable to us camping overnight. Shortly after we had set up camp we were visited by the Game Warden. He was also happy we had stopped as they apparently get quite a lot of poaching on their property from the Bull Creek hunting area and was happy to know we were safe on the grounds for the night.

The campsite itself is a cleared area with several buildings. As we stopped at the picnic table I wondered if one of the buildings might contain toilets as it had several cubible like doors. Investigating the first one I indeed found a flush toilet and running water! Even better, continuing down all the stalls, the last two contained actual solar heated hot water showers! What a find!

After a very pleasant night we set out for our final day's hiking, but realized we had little chance of completing the entire loop to our proposed destination. Instead we decided to take a connector trail short cut back to Grant's vehicle parked at Bull Creek. It turned out to be a good thing, as we returned to find a flat tire!

So not the weekend we planned, but a good hike for me anyway!

View more photos in my Picasa album

Tosahatchee

Florida is supposed to be in a drought, but someone forgot to tell Tosohatchee that. We spent the first 5 minutes of the hike attempting to take the high path along an old disused dirt road, but eventually realized the futility of trying to keep our feet dry. Within a half mile or so we were knee deep in cold water. The hiking went well for the first hike out in a while. The trail was mainly wet, but in some places just very muddy, and in a few rare places is was actually dry.

At some stage in the swamp we heard a very loud double boom that sounded like a building being blown up. We were curious, but kept hiking. Later we learned that the Space Shuttle had landed that afternoon. What we had heard was the sonic boom. We were very close to Kennedy Space Center in Tosahatchee. The boom sounded different here than it does from my home in Tampa when the shuttle lands. Much louder of course.

Just as we were starting to get discouraged with the wet, mud, lack of wildlife (other than the voracious hoards of mosquitoes) I walked past a tree and caught a furry grey movement out of the corner of my eye. There were three small raccoons clinging to the tree. One fell out as I turned to look, and he slunk away to hide in the grass. The other two posed, to a varying degree for some photos. I know raccoons are considered vermin, but they sure are cute when they are little and before they have figured out how to beg or steal food.

After a brief time out on the roads as we passed through Christmas we entered Orlando Wetlands Park. I had hiked this section previously, but as it's just a partial day's worth of hiking I rehiked it. OWP is a water utility wetlands facility that assists in the treatment of waste water from Orlando. The park is officially closed October through April, but hikers are allowed to use the perimeter trail. It was a quiet walk, apart from the buzz of mosquitoes. We saw a couple of otters, armadillos, turtles, and the rear end of a wild hog, as well as many buzzards a couple of hawks and an owl.

The final part of the day was a short road walk past the site of the original wooden Ft Christmas.

View more photos in my Picasa album

Annual Juniper Backpack trip

The annual Juniper Wilderness backpack trip is usually a fun filled time: it's on familiar territory, and usually the same core of friends, with a few new ones thrown in each year. This year was no exception. We all had a great time. I suffered a little from the shortness of breath caused by my recent cold, and coughed all through the cold night. Ian suffered worse though, he had brought his lightweight sleeping bag and it turned out to be the first night in the 30's this year.

The hike in was good, and we saw many more other hikers on the trail than last year, which was immediately after a forest fire. This year the ajor trail damage was caused by windstorms. There was an area about a mile long that was constant blowdown of small trees, hundreds of them. It was like trying to hike through pick up sticks. The saddle campground at Hidden Pond was occupied, so we continued on out to the opn campsite by the lake, which I think most of us prefer anyway. There was no drunk naked guy at the Pond this year, but there were at least two other groups camping around the lake. Just as we were setting up our dinners someone called our "Bear" and sure enough a large Black Bear was wandering along the opposite lake shore. It apparently circled all the way around the lake, as someone later saw it while taking a bathroom trip, but it never bothered us.

View more photos in my Picasa album