We Want To See Florida: 2012

Yep you guessed it another backpacking trip in the middle of the summer, and where else would you rather be than Christmas Florida. We figured what a better way to spend my 40th B-Day than out in the woods on the great Florida Trail. Well lemme tell yea it was a totally different trip.
We had our parking areas plotted out and our trip, but after a little scouting trip I didnt see what i wanted to in St. Nicholas rd. parking. There wasnt a great place to leave a truck overnight. Me and James talked about it a few times and figured it would be ok, but both of us were a little worried about the situation. Saturday morning I was still a little worried, and i guess so was James. He called me and we changed areas, we decided to meet up at Taylor Creek Rd. and Hwy 50 then we would find a spot in the Tosohatchee W.M.A. there was plenty of parking there we knew but it was unscouted by us. No problem, so we drove around and found a spot, did a fast scouting trip down a trial and found the orange blaze that we needed, great , now lets get to our starting point. Yates rd. Just a few mins down the road we get there. Now we are ready for a none prairy, nicely shaded, July hike! HMMMMMMM,

Yep were are in the right area.

Thats us, and no we didnt plan the white shirts, just trying to stay cool.

Did i say plenty of shade?

As you can see the shade didnt happen quite as planned, but surely we will get in the shade soon. We start out about 11 am, and in no hurry, we just want to enjoy the walk. As always there is plenty of laughing and talking. The sun isnt too hot yet, and there are some clouds, this section is just a road and then the shade in about 30 mins or so ( about a mile ).
We did learn from the last trip, so water wasnt a issue, all together we had more than enough, and also had sun screen, and plenty of bug repellent .
After about a half hour we make it to the trees we all wanted, the shade was going to feel nice, and with the breeze it would be even better.

did i say shade? My Bad!

So it turns out there had been a fire out there, dont know if it was a wild fire or control burn, who cares NO SHADE!! LOL. Its all good, we are still enjoying the moment and enjoying the trail. Trail? What Trail? It tuns out that when there is a fire, the blaze orange gets burned off of trees also, and when there is no canopy the grass grows faster. There were a few blazes and at times the trail was easy to find. There was a time James says " I may have to break out the compass". and he did. This isnt what i would call a easy hike at all. Dont get me wrong it was still fun, but we had to split up and find the blazes at 1 time, and had to use some skills from our orienteering races. I really am glad that we didnt bring anyone new out here. This kind of walking really is harder than normal. I dont think Debi really had this kind of hiking in her mind, i know i didnt.
On the plus side we are out in the Real Florida, and to be honest I really enjoyed the change in scenery difference from ocala. There is nothing wrong with ocala, but change is good.

Trail? What trail?

there it is, now if we could just catch up to them.

Debi and me slowed down as the grass got taller, and the ground got wetter. The thing about no shade is tall grass, and disappearing trails. The advantage of no canopy is well we found one.

this is the only one there, i have no idea what brought it out there, but i was nice to see.
Did i mention the area was alittle swampy at times? We were close to the great St. Johns river, and it turns out the closer to the river we got, the more water the ground would hold. So squish squish with every step. Advantage in this is no hills to go up and down, disadvange well to mention a few, wet feet ( which can add to blisters on your feet), skeeters , skeeters , and a few more skeeters.

watch out for the nails sticking out o the wood

You Can Do It

Any one find the shade yet?

After a couple of hours and a few miles we came to a cross trail. That was a good spot for lunch, and a much needed break. The trail did get much better in this area, we weren't far from a good stopping spot for the night.

Lunch time!

I havent really talked about any animals, mostly because most of what we saw were the signs of animals, it seems that the hogs really like it out there, and the deer probably enjoy it there also.James did see one deer that was running off, i guess we are alittle loud out there.
Back to the trail LOL, after a break and some food, we are off again. Not much longer after lunch we came across one of the most interesting creek crossings .

watch your step

Yea that middle one is just a little bit wobbly, First i cross just to check, Then Debi ( who wasnt very happy bout this one ) , James then Ken. Come to find out, that when everyone crosses the blocks get looser and looser, We almost got a good laugh at Ken getting wet, but he made it.

Its always good to see trees! SHADE!!!

gettin closer

We Made IT

WOOT WOOT!!!!

So here is camp, oh yea did i mention? We arent supposed to just camp anywhere out here, and the campsites were just too far to make it there in a day trip for us. So we " winged it". We figured the worst thing that would happen is they would ask us to leave in the middle of the night. So here is camp, we were right on the water, and hung out on the bridge all day. The breeze was nice to have and the conversation was great.
We didnt set up right away for obvious reasons, We did some looking around to find a good spot to hang our hammocks. We knew that we werent going to do a fire because of the heat. So no "work" just relaxing. We get the Therma-cells out to help with the skeeters, And i was impressed how well they work.
It was nice to have a cup of coffee and some fig newtons, and just chill on the bridge. All we needed to do was set up the hammocks and go to sleep.

debi and my set up.

Debi was petty worn out and not feeling good, so we set up earlier than Ken and James, so she could lay down when she was ready.
We really just hung around the bridge most of the day and listened to the bull frogs, or was it hogs? hmmm, Shhhhhh dont tell Debi..She was on boogar alert all day and night. The hogs were bad out there but i think there were more frogs than hogs. Or were they BOOGARS?!!!

The sun was starting to go down and BAM!!! a rainbow appears, the pic doesnt do it justice, you could see all the colors and it went forever.
Ken and James decided to set up there hammocks on the bridge so they could enjoy the breeze all night, i didnt think it would work but they pulled it off .

I just hope no one wants to cross the bridge tonight. That couldnt happen right? well come to find out, it could.
Deb and I went to bed about 9 or so, and didnt take long to fall asleep. Then a couple of hours later i hear Ken say " someones coming", my first thought is gamewarden, so i wake deb and get out of the hammock, and see the truck lights, then i hear them talking, nope not a gamewarden but a couple of guys which seem to be frog gigging. But i think we ruined there spot. After they left it was hard to fall back asleep, but i managed to get a few more hours, deb not so much. We left our pillows at home trying to save some weight but it wasnt worth the sacrifice. And when the therma cells went off the skeeters would tear us up.
So its morning, about 6 am , time to start the coffee and try to wake up, eat some instant oatmeal , and bandage up the blisters, break camp , and head off.
We left somewhere around 730 am. We have about 4 miles to go, hopefully the trail will be nice to us. Yea thatll happen. i have one word SWAMP. Yep its gonna be a wet walk out and thats not good for blisters. Te trail wasnt bad for the most part on this leg. But when it got bad it was BAD.

at least there is shade

deb with here flops on due to the blisters, walking a few miles with flops was the lesser of 2 evils

SWAMP, and yes we went right through the middle, flops and all

getting ready to leave

Powerline Road, I can see for miles and miles!!!!

I forgot to mention, we had a armadillo right under debs hammock, and Ken and James chased off a black racer on the trail. Didnt see many ticks, and No Chiggers!!

We made it out about 10 am with a few blisters and wet feet, but all in all it was a Great 40th Birth Day, and cant wait for the next trip!!!!!
Thanks Debi, Ken, and James for being there! Yall made this trip a great one!!!!!!!!

So everyone is getting on board for this blogging stuff, check out there blogs and see how they enjoyed the trips. Their blogs are just starting, and i am very interested in the progression of the blogs. Thanks again for reading!

Debi
Ken

First we have to thank our sponsors which include any product that contains deet, any product that has sun block and good ol' fashion H2O!!!!

We had this trip planned for about a month or so, then the closer we got to the time the closer Tropical Storm Debby got ( which wasnt a named storm yet, ) . We all thought it would be a fun time in the rain to be able to learn more with different elements like the rain. We figured if we can survive the freezing cold from the last backpacking trip surely the rain wont stop us. Well ill sum it up by saying What Rain!!!!
Debi ( not the storm notice the spelling ) and I leave the house about 7:30 am to meet James and Ken at Juniper Springs to drop off the car and head to Hopkins Prairie parking area, it was cloudy and drizzlin a little bit of rain. So we are sure we are going to get rained on the majority of time. I was a little concerned about Debis bag being a little heavy, and after taking a few months off I wanted to be sure she was nice and comfy despite the rain. We talked a little about it and I decided to remove 2 litters of water from her bag to help her out some. I broke rule number 1, Never sacrifice weight for water. And i wont do that again! When James and Ken arrived we loaded their gear up and headed out, jokin about the rain and all the fun we would have in the storm. We had about a 20 min ride or so to get the Hopkins Prairie parking and I hollar BEAR LOOK AT THE BEAR !! Not even 5 mins after Ken says " dont count on seeing a bear I have a bear curse ". It was our first bear encounter ever ( well mine and Debis at least maybe Kens and James ) .. We were so excited til we realized he ran the way we were goin to be walking, kinda made us say HMMMMMM.
We jump out of the truck and start our trip, All of us had sprayed ourselves with bug spray to be sure there were no problems with skeeters, well we didnt think about all of the deer flies, i kid you not i think we stirred up a hundred of them the first 5 mins in and it didnt stop for a mile or 2. I saw 10 on Debis backside at one time, and yes i did swat them off the best i could. No problem we made it through that with some laughs. I dont know what was worse the deer flies or all the spider webs, seemed like every 10 feet was another web across the trail, i thought James and Ken did great clearing them out for Deb and I LOL. While we walk i have a habbit of watching the feet of the person in front of me, this time it was James in front, and then i saw it, yep IT, the dreaded snake, just about 6 inches from James's feet a Pigmy Rattle Snake. I have seen a few of them while i was working but this is the first one that Debi has seen. No James didnt get bit but it goes to show we need to watch the ground and watch out for spiders at the same time.
The later in the morning it got the hotter it got , yea its summer time in Florida we know, but remember it is supposed to be raining all day and/or overcast. I guess thats one more the weather man missed. I was bright and sunny almost the whole day. The sun was beating us down and laughing at us, Debi was suffering pretty bad, so she was dumping water over her head and we were taking breaks at almost all of the shaded areas. There were very few trees and very little shade. We were hoping for a good place to take a break and cool down some which we found at "hidden pond" . Once we realized where we were we knew things would get better, it was almost time to set up camp all we needed to do was cross whiskey creek bridge and start looking for a good place to set up. It was only about 1.2 miles or so to start lookin.
We did find the creek with no problem, and James noticed it could be a decent place to camp there. But we pushed on a little bit further til we got to a small pine area. Debi was still hurting and ready to stop, James wanted to get closer to the river ( juniper springs river ) so James and Ken set there gear down at the end of the pines and headed off to look for another spot. Deb and I stayed at the gear and took a break, and i did a little bit of scouting in that area where i found a old camp site the " Roy " had set up. We know it was Roys spot because he left his name on a make shift bench he built.
After Ken and James got back we decided to camp at Roys spot, we took a looks around and saw a lot of widow makers that had fallen. We still figured it was the best spot for that area. We knew we had to get set up before the rains hit so we all got busy. Then it was time to fight the ticks, i pulled about 4 off of me before we had the hammocks set up. And probably about 6 before i was done with my coffee, they were everywhere!
We decided that because we were low on water that we would catch the rain water to resupply us, again NEVER BREAK RULE NUMBER 1 !!!!! Yep you guessed it NO RAIN!! We could hear the thunder and we even saw a few storms, but we get maybe 10 drops on us! It was still breezy so the temps werent to bad at camp, but i was a little dehydrated and James was low on water also.We werent in horrible shape for water i still had 4 liters so we knew we could make it back no problem, but thats still a bad feeling of being low.
Ken, James , and I headed out to see if we could get some wood and while we were there Ken noticed a camp site that was closer to the water, after we got a ( yes i said a ) log we went back out and tried to find the river for more water and maybe a quick dip. We got " close" to it but started to run out of daylight, if we were in bad need of the water we could have gotten it there. We went back to camp and saw a deer on the way back.
After dinner and a almost good nights sleep, i say almost cuz evidently there was a critter ( or bugger as we call it ) walking close to camp and scared Deb as it snorted and stomped, i didnt hear it but the guys did. James says it sounded like a Buck snorting so it was all good!!! The rain stared about 4 or 5 am, but it was just a drizzle.
We headed out about 8 am after coffee and breaking camp, the walk out was a good one nice and cool with the light rain.
It was a good trip with plenty of wildlife to see, if the rain would have started Sat. morning it would have been a lot better of a trip.
Here are a few pics .... Thanks for reading!!!!!