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
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