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.
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