We started this section from Gold Head Branch, and after a brief walk through Camp Blanding and some private hunting land for the remainder of the morning. After that we deviated from our maps. The remainder of the mapped walk from Camp Blanding to Lake Butler is a road walk connector. The other night at Debs, she had mentionned that the Florida Trail would shortly be moved off the road and onto the Palatka to State Butler State Trail. This is an old rail bed that the Florida Trail has just received permission to route the Trail along. It has not yet been blazed, but will be soon. Deb told us that it had been recently mowed and was ready for hiking. We would be the first hikers to use it. We couldn’t pass that up, so armed with directions on how to hook up to the start point, we set out. It is a great addition to the trail that moves 25 miles or so of trail off the road. Yeah!!!!
The trail was mainly maintained, but there are a couple of rough patches, and a couple of old railroad bridges that might need a foottread to add a bit of confidence crossing them, but were passable. We just loved being off the road. We saw more wildlife than we would have hiking the road: a herd of about 20 wild hogs, several bobcats, small black snake, chicken, wildflowers, etc. Much nicer than cars!
At the town of Hampton there were a couple of areas of rough trail, but we battled on through and were soon on the long straight well maintained grassy old railbed that we had come to expect. At the end of that day's hike we returned to the start car at the Hampton ball park to find a business card on the windshield from the local police officer saying how he wanted us to know that he’d been watching our cars for the last couple of days (the other car was parked in the same spot yesterday, and both have FL Trail stickers in the rear window) and that they were happy to have us here. How is that for a welcome message for the new trail!
On the final day of hiking we came to the old trestle bridge at New River. We had been warned that this bridge was out and we would have to descend into the river bed and ford the river. Before starting out this morning we had made a scouting trip to the next road bridge upstream of this point to see how much water was flowing and whether it would be feasible to try to cross. It looked low, so we decided to chance crossing it. As we approached the river I spotted something running or hopping by the bridge. At first I assumed it was a large jack rabbit, but as we approached Ian realized it was a Bobcat. It could cross onto the bridge easier than we could, and it took refuge on one of the bridge pilings and watched us warily while we tried to get close enough for photos. Eventually I made my way down the embankment to the river bed, hoping that it would make the cat move into Ian’s view, but suddenly it just disappeared as stealthily as you would expect of a cat. Down at the river we finally decided it was shallow enough to wade across. It wasn’t too cold or deep, and there was a nice solid sandy bottom with no slimy mud. Continuing down the trail were two additional washed out bridges over creeks much smaller than the New River, and both were easily navigated without getting wet.Around lunchtime today we passed through Lake Butler and joined up with the original FL Trail leaving us just a half mile road walk before turning north and heading into the Lake Butler Forest. It was nice to be back in the woods, but we had both enjoyed the long straight rail trail walk, and especially the 30 mile road walk it had saved us.
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