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!
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