FL Trail - Potts Preserve work weekend

Spent the weekend doing trail maintenance at Potts Preserve on the Florida Trail. I love backpacking out at Potts because it's so lightly used, and if you can discount the noise of the airboats, so quiet. I had received a newsletter telling me it had been neglected, maintenance wise, for a couple of years, and I haven't been out there this year due to finishing the FT hike, and the AT "thru became a section" hike. Charles, who led the last group backpack trip I did out there last year, had mentionned that the trail signage for the backcountry river campsite was missing too. I was expecting it to be quite a mess, and hard work. There was camping available so I took the RV up for a run out, thinking I'd at least be able to get showered up and eat decent while I was there.

Surprisingly, it really didn't seem in too bad condition, to me at least. There was a good turnout of about a dozen people and several ATVs, so it was easy to get everyone out to seperate areas to work. I took on the duties of picking up behind the brush cutters, and repainting blazes. You can never get too much orange paint on you, after all! We finished the first section very quickly, and went back to the prearranged luch meet up spot, only to find that we'd been misinformed about where we should have been brush cutting and blazing. Apparently we hadn't gone far enough. Maybe that's why we thought the brush wasn't that bad!

Anyway, we found a few cleanup jobs to do around the lunch area until it was time to eat, then went back to continue, in the correct area this time, in the afternoon. By then there were many more people available to cover this section, and we had 3 of us picking and painting. We got talking and fell way behind the brush cutters, but just kept on picking up and repainting. Eventually, late in the afternoon the section leader walked back down to find us. We were only a couple hundred yards from the road we were working towards, but apparently everyone else was anxious to get finished and get home. I was surprised, because I thought there were to be two full work days, but apparently the first day was yesterday, and I missed it.

It was a good day's work though. Not a great deal of hiking, probably only about 5 miles, but all the bending to pick up, and stretching to reach up to the blazes has got me rather stiff! There was no point staying in the camping area with no electric hookup if there was no work day tomorrow. It had got quite hot in the RV last night with no a/c. But there wasn't much point driving the rig home in the dark either, so I just drove oout of the Preserve to a nearby RV park and rented a spot for th night with all the amenities. I was super tired from all that outdoor activity. I remember hearing a storm approaching at about 9pm, but it wasn't over me yet. I assume it did come over, and must have rained quite hard, becasue my bedding was wet this morning from rain coming in the wide open window. I didn't hear a thing though - very rare for me. I also needn't have worried about having an electric hookup for the air conditioner. I didn't need it on last night, and this morning I have the heat on! Incredible. It's not freezing cold, but it sure was a cooler start than we've had since I returned from the AT. Fall must be coming to Florida.

After a lazy breakfast I packed up and stripped the wet bedding and headed home.

It wasn't quite as long or hard a weekend as I'd expected, but satisfying none the less. I'll have to try to get out to Potts in the next couple of months and see if my knees are up to backpacking again. I should be able to manage the short side of the loop, even in I'm not ready for the entire thing yet.