Rodman to Gold Head Branch

We’re back on the trail again after a week or so break for F-Troop (FL Trail’s maintenance program) for me, and for Ian some time to catchup the section of the Eastern Corridor he needed to complete it.

We started this section at the north End of the Ocala Natioanl Forest at Rocman Campground. This is rather significant for us, because the 50 miles of Ocala up to Rodman was the first backpack that Ian and I completed together, about a year and a half ago. It seems like forever, but we remember back then saying that we both had the desire to hike the entire Florida Trail, and that we doubted we'd ever find anyone who would both have the desire and the time to do so. And now here we are, in a concerted effort to complete the remainder of the trail together before the Spring. We are far enough north now to make daily shuttling from Orlando totally impractical, so have started our first road trip. The intention is to make our way north and west from campground to campground, hopefully staying 3 – 5 days from each and dayhiking as we have been, but based from the tents. Today everything went fairly smoothly. We were both fairly organized and got going at a reasonable time, assisted by the very mild weather we have been having. It was in the mid 60s this morning, and will likely remain warm and dry until the weekend. Of course, mild nights means hot days. It was a sticky mid 80s at the warmest part of the day. Fortunately we were on shaded forest roads and in dense forest for most of the hike.

From Rodman it's a short hike up along the embankment of the canal to Buckman Lock from Rodman. The lock-keeper opened the gate for us, and we talked with him for a while. Then it was back in the woods again to Rice Creek Sanctuary where we saw a good size alligator by the creek, and a family of 5 wild hogs, including one white baby hog. That is the first time I have seen the hogs up close. They passed within 20 feet of me, and were not concerned at all by our presence.

The next morning started out with some strange fungus that looked ice rimmed. At 70 degrees, of course it wasn’t, but it served as a great reminder to us how lucky we are to be hiking in shirt sleeves in the middle of December. I scared up a flock of about 40 turkeys somewhere in the middle of Booger Woods. I’m sure they will be thinned out by the end of the hunting season if they continue to hang out in this private hunting area.

Back out on roads again, but this time sandy back roads which, after a couple of hours, we had had enough of the great glute workout! The roads took us into Etonia Creek State Park. We stopped for a break at a bench overlooking the ravine the creek has carved. We have not seen anything like this so far in our FL Trail travels. The ravine is quite deep and contains many different types of trees we don’t see much in Florida, very tall skinny magnolias and tulip poplars. The entire trail through this State park was very well maintained, with great blazing, signage and bridges, and the Iron bridge shelter, neat and clean, and complete with two chairs to relax in in addition to the picnic table. It would definitely have been worth a stop for the night if the car was not just 2 miles away.

About a mile into the final hike of this section, Ian commented how some unseen dogs had picked up his scent and were really barking behind us. We both assumed it was hunters and continued hiking. A couple of miles later, we had just sat down for a break when we heard the dogs again, much louder this time, and the staccato noise of a voice over a radio. Imagine our surprise when we were surrounded a few minutes later by a team of Dept of Corrections officers and K9 tracker dogs. They were on a practice ‘escapee roundup’ and had caught our scent and tracks, and had been following us! One of the officers asked if we had just come down the trail, then asked to see our boots. Seeing the tread on Ian’s boots he exclaimed that no wonder the dogs had picked up our scent instead of their intended target, as they had spent all afternoon yesterday tracking us too! They didn’t seem too upset, or happy either, but quickly radio’d in that it was a false track. Within minutes a vehicle arrived to transport them, and they disappeared to restart back where the dogs had first picked up our trail.

It was a little bit of unanticipated excitement for us anyway. It must have been a dog day for us today. Twice more during the hike we passed homes where dogs followed us outside their yards and onto the trail. Neither was particularly bothersome except for the worry that we were leading them away from their homes and along roads.

After a hot roadwalk we finally arrived at Gold Head State Park in the mid afternoon. The park buildings were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1920s. The remainder of the afternoon’s hike took us alongside the ravine of the stream the park is named for: a gorgeous, crystal clear, bubbling spring fed stream.

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Prairie Lakes F-Troop

Spent the last five days on the Florida Trail at Prairie Lakes with the F-Troop crew building a 505 foot boardwalk over a Cypress Swamp that often required hikers to take a high water reroute. Florida is very dry right now but there was still water in this area.

I spent the majority of the week standing in knee deep water with an extension cord over my shoulder and an electric drillin hand. I was very careful to keep the cord strung up in the trees above water level!

After the baordwalk was finished we built a couple of benches for the platform.

Hot, wet, and dirty! Just the way we like F-Troop.

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Paynes Prairie

We took a weekend off hiking the Florida Trail to go hiking!

I know it seems weird, but a group of friends always does an annual Ranger led trip into Paynes Prairie. It's a very short hike in, about 4 miles, then an afternoon free to wander the Prairie. In the past we've seen wild horses, and there are also buffalo there, and the sunsets are pretty. We always take extravagant food in as it's such a short hike, and the good food and adult beverages flow pretty freely.

It was, as always, a nice laid back weekend.

Triple N and Bull Creek

I actually only had 2 ½ miles to hike today but ended up hiking 12 ½. A couple of weekends ago when I backpacked the Three Lakes to Bull Creek section with Grant we opted to hike the shorter white trail back to the car on our final day. Last week Ian and I had hiked the longer orange blazed trail, but had not been able to get as close to the Forever Florida fence (where the orange and white trails connect) as I anticipated. So that left me a 2 ½ mile hike to connect the two. Today Ian started his make up hike of the 40 or so miles I have hiked but he missed. We hatched a plan to drop him about 12 miles down trail, ending with the same fenceline to car miles that I need to hike. While he hiked through, rather than just sit in the car and read/snooze I decided to hike the Florida Trail loop hike in the nearby Triple N Ranch WMA.

The loop hike is a great little hike through flatland scrub and along the banks of Crabgrass Creek. The entire loop is well blazed, grass sections were recently mowed, and some recent maintenance done on the center part of the loop. However the creek section was very rough hard scrambling. The blazes are clear, but traveling between the blazes was often challenging. In several places I actually exclaimed “You’ve got to be kidding”. “How?”, when I saw the location of the next blaze. The area was very lush and could be a very pleasant hike, but I spent too much time and effort worrying about navigating and footing to be able to enjoy the surroundings fully. The trail is only a couple of years old, and sparsely used, so hopefully eventually it will become better. I was obviously the first person through in quite some time, evidenced by the complete lack of foot tread, and the massive amounts of spiderweb “condos” across the trail. I ate more than my fair share of web today, and had one little freak out moment when I missed seeing a low web, walked into it and on looking down saw it’s massive occupant, stunned, but crawling calmy across the bare flesh of my abdomen! Eeek!

It actually took me about 3 ½ hours to complete the loop, mainly due to the very slow going along the creek and the extra time I took to take photos of spiders. Next I moved over a couple of miles to the Bull Creek WMA for that final 2 ½ mile stretch, which of course would actually be 5 miles in and out. We had timed the day to finish at about the same time, so I expected to pass Ian somewhere as I was running a little late. Talk about timing: As I approached the fenceline stile from the south, Ian came over it while I was about 30 feet away! We drank a couple of cups of coffee to celebrate my finishing the Eastern Corridor took a couple of photos, and finished the hike back to the car.

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Seminole State Forest

A great couple of days hiking, and probably the warmest we have had so far on the eastern corridor. It was a couple of very contrasting days. The first, along nice level bicycle/horse trail and some beautifully manicured trail through Seminole State Forest. We came across a ranger out looking for invasive plants, and spent a very pleasant hour chatting with him, and then I inadvertently added a mile or so of hiking by chasing down a blue blaze for a spring. I eventually gave up, and the extra miles don’t count anyway. The afternoon was back into deep forest and a refreshing change from all the paved walking recently. It made us both look forward to getting into the northern forests next month.


The second day though, was when it all went downhill! Towards the middle of the day we passed through recently burned area, where there was also storm damage from a tornado last spring. Someone had re-blazed the trail with orange tape since the fire. It was a little confusing to follow in places where the taping did not quite match the few unburned blazes, but was followable. Unfortunately, when we reached the storm damaged area it had been marked for logging out the damaged trees, and every tree over about 6 inches diameter which was not to be logged was also marked with orange tape!. That made for an impossible to follow trail. Eventually, after wandering around in circles for an hour or so we just decided on a north and west course until eventually we bumped into the blazed trail beyond the damaged area.

We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, but saw lots of good prints: bears and a small cat in two different areas, and several areas where flocks of wither turkeys or cranes had spent some time walking the trail.

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Bull Creek to Tosahatchee

We’re filling in the road walk between Bull Creek WMA and Tosahatchee Reserve. It’s about 30 miles total so we decided to go easy on ourselves and out feet and split it into 3 short days.

We started out with a couple of miles through Bull Creek, unfortunately we couldn't get the car in as far as I would have liked tostart the hike. I was hoping to get in to the point where the trail crosses into Bull Creek from Forever. When I hiked up to here a few weeks ago with Grant we took the white blazed connector back to the car, so now I have a tiny 2 ½ miles "hikelet" of Bull creek still to hike!

The trail itself was a little rough through the palmetto, long grass and cypress swamps, but nice to have a whole day off the roads again. We saw several hunters, and some very close shots, but no wildlife to speak of, just a couple of tiny frogs, several clumps of pitcher plants and some of the joys of winter hiking in Florida, wildflowers. In the last 3 miles at the northern end of Bull Creek the grass was high and the mosquitoes very large and voracious.

Exiting the woods on Thanksgiving morning, we were now in for the long road walk. We took our Thanksgiving lunchbreak on the level grassy bank by the road. While eating lunch I noticed a large black spider investigating my boots. It looked like a miniature version of a fake plastic spider with bright green fangs. Only it was real! It was quite placid while I shoed it around trying to get a photo, however when it spotted Ian’s lunch mat it took off in that direction, and as it reached it it turned into attack mode.

I haven’t seen Ian move that fast in a while, but I didn’t have to wait long for a repeat. Immediately after setting out for the afternoon, Ian suddenly stopped moving forward and backed up very rapidly. I thought it was probably another spider until I heard a rattle. Coiled right in front of him was a large rattle snake, as thick around as my forearm. He was quite defensive, hissing and pulling himself up, so we never saw him stretched out, but I would guess he was about 4 feet long. That sure made us look where we were putting our feet for the remainder of the afternoon.

A little further down the road we saw our 4th hawk of the day. It was quite an exciting nature walk for being beside a road. We finally made it back to the car, and drove to Moss Park for the annual Florida Trail Thanksgiving campout dinner. We were very late after all the delays of the day, but thankfully they had saved us food. And it was good.

The remainder of the hike was all roads. Not very pretty, but a pleasant enough walk considering it was alongside a couple of quite busy highways. Fortunately the grass sides were wide, and mainly fairly level. We did have a little “Ianism moment” when almost to the end of the road walk, he, for some strange reason decided he hadn’t hiked enough miles down SR520. We were taking a break at the junction of 520 and Yates where the trail changed direction. The blazes were not entirely clear where to cross the road and change direction, but the map for some reason shows a walk down one road and a complete U turn back again down the other. Guess who had to walk it all the way down to the next junction just in case there was a blaze down there? As I continued northbound and turned to watch him “making miles” I saw a SOBO blaze indicating that the trail turned directly onto 520 there, but he apparently had already made up his mind to walk down 520 and back up Yates. Gotta love him!

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Catching up in southern Ocala NF

I'm in the southern half of Ocala National forest. Ian has already hiked this section at the beginning of last year’s 70/70 hike, when I could not join him until Juniper, so I am playing catchup. There was a weekend gathering of hikers from whiteblaze.net at Juniper Springs this weekend, so I decided to join them for the camping and hike around 10 miles a day to complete this missing piece.

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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