Hopkins Prairie to Juniper Springs

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!!!!!

Our Path

From Left to Right Shawn ( me ) , Debi , James, and Ken  (his first hike on  the Florida Trail )

Pygmy Rattler 

part of the trail

US!!!

Danger Danger

Just the beginning

Ken and James

deer flies attacking James

did i mention Kens Caterpillar ?

I have no idea what he was doing LOL

going UP!!!!

are we there yet?

Hidden Pond, Break time

Tut Tut looks like rain...... yea right that didnt happen

we made it!!!! 

HOME SWEET HOME 

coffee time

Kens set up 

James' hammock

Breaking Camp

ready to go

waiting on you Shawn!!!!

yep still waiting

Leaving Juniper Prairie

Clearwater Lake to Alexander Springs

 So we made the plans on doing this trip for about 3 weeks before we went, little did we know what we were in for. We all were watching the weather all week, lows in the 40s. We thought " thats do able" , hmmmmm well when i woke up Saturday morning I did my normal coffee, turn the news on, then POW right in the face. The weather man told me it was going to be 28 degs. Sunday morning. My first thoughts were OMG what is Deb going to think, so i let her sleep for a while until i could figure out how to tell her. 45 mins pass and i guess its time to wake her. Well that kinda didnt go as i planned, but shes a trooper and went anyway. I may have left out the wind when i told her ( ooopppssss ) .  So wind chill Sunday morning was going to put us at about 16 degs, i dont think thats the best weather to be sleeping in a hammock. So panic is setting in.
 To be honest Saturday wasnt all that bad weather wise, BUT  when we get there we kinda realize that our packs are just about 20 lbs too heavy, maybe not that bad but they were bad. Deb really struggled with hers, i wasnt happy about mine, and James well he seemed to be fine with his. Although his bag was heavy also.
 So we head out on our way, despite the weight. About 2/10ths of a mile on the first spur trail i look down and see bear tracks, no worries we have spray ( just thought i would throw that in ). I didnt say anything to Deb cause she was having a hard time, with the new bag and all that stuff. I wasnt sure how she would react that soon in with the thought of the bears. We do make it about half way on the first day and want to stop for lunch and clean out our shoes, ( gotta love sugar sand ).

 While sitting on a tree to eat some wraps that Deb made, we looked at our legs and noticed more freckles on our legs and they were moving, yep CHIGGERS! Time to move, i jumped up brushed off and looked down, now i have carpenter ants climbing on me!!! REALLYY!!!!! LOL.
 So we head off again, and see all kinds of great camping areas, BTW in Ocala you can camp anywhere there arent any designated campgrounds. We really want to hit our "6" mile point then start looking for a place to camp. Well i guess i miss added , by the time we got to our "6" mile point, we had gone 6.9 miles, and guess what? The terrain changed, all we can see is Pines right in the middle of palmettos, not the best to be sleeping in .

  Well now we are all ready to be done for the day but we have to find a place to camp, and there doesnt look like any great place to camp. James is pushing on me and deb are lagging behind trying to keep our spirits up. Finally we realize we are just going to have to grab the first thing we see. After about 8 miles James runs up to a spot that we see from a distance, and comes back with good news, its got potential. So we go about 200 more yards up hill in the snow and blizzard conditions. WE MADE IT!!!

Nap time! She earned it...

Deb making coffee, James chillin

Cheif James " HOW"

James hard at work

SOUPS ON!!!!

 Well after about a hour of cleaning the area up and deciding where to hang the hammocks, and where the fire should be, and getting fire wood, it was a GREAT spot! We all liked it.
 That night was a interesting night, we had a raccoon come up to our camp about 50 feet or so ( my bad, i thew the water from the pot after cleaning it out there, i wont do that again ), and we kept hearing this strang sound. We kind of think it was a fawn looking for its mama, or the wind in the trees, or the dreaded Swamp Skunk. Either way we made it, even with all the bear scat we saw, the snapping trees, the chiggers, and the dreaded blizzard conditions. The night was cold and getting colder. james and me stayed up talking for a little while, while Deb when to bed.
 We did wake early, and when walking early, Deb was cold and sore, and we had about 3 miles out, but again she made it.
 I hate that this sounds like we hated it, cuz we didnt we all had fun and cant wait for another one, minus the cold and heavy bags. It was a great learning experience for us. We loved all of the terrain change.  I really like the thought of not having a designated campsite, and was really looking forward to seeing the wild life ( we didnt see much, but they were out there).
 Here are some more pics,
 Leave some comments so we know what you think!!!

Im SO TIRED!! LOL, Nooooo this isnt staged LOL

What is it with me and signs?

I thought this "canopy" was cool

Just a pretty sunset

See theres a smile , told you she was having a good time. 

Little Big Econ

Well first of all i think we should thank our sponsors OMG and LOL, because there was a lot of Oh My God this hurts, or Oh My God are we almost done. But like always there is a lot of laughing out loud, we seem to always find the fun in things. 
 To be honest I dont think we were ready for 8 miles, and we were kind of in a pickle with planning this hike. We know this area pretty well and knew it was going to be a hard day but i think it was harder than planned. This was a great learning experience for Deb and me, and I'm pretty sure James leaned something also.
 We started out pretty much were we finished on our first hike. We didnt do the paved on Curryville road, ( about 1.9 miles )we started on Whispering Forest Trail . So we started off in pretty good spirits except for Deb having problems with her bag, but she got that fixed pretty fast. This area had a little bit of everything to see from the palmettos, to the wide open areas, to the fern forest, and even The Little Big Econ river. We really only saw 2 people on the trail until we got into the Econ area, and then it got busy with people ( but we knew it would be).
 The campsite that we wanted was taken, but we did get our second choice, which i thought was a great location. We were surrounded by trees, which did give us plenty of fire wood. The one main problem with this area to camp in is the college is not far and the students love this place to party in. We did have noisy neighbors til about 2 am, but again we knew this could happen. This is still a great place to camp out, and it is pretty close to the house.

The thinking man.

Debis' favorite thing about hiking 

I love the signs in the middle of no where. We didnt stay here .

Brave brave girl LOL.. and $10 richer.

Can you see it on her face " Would you please hurry up" LOL

SSSSSSTTTTTRRRRREEEETTTTCCCCHHHH!!!!!

A lonely tree 

James and Me

Flagler Trail

OMG are we there yet!!??

The little big econ

We Made It!!! now weres the coffee!!!!!

There it is !!!!! looks like we can stay for a while..

 All in All we had a great time, and did get to learn a lot more about backpacking. We cant wait to get out there and do it again........