Ocala National Forest

I decided to backpack Ocala again after my trip last year (1,2). This time was shorter, only 3 days and 50 miles. The forecast changed for my 4th Day to steady rain and 40s during the day and freezing temperatures overnight. I was not ready for that so I called John for an early pick-up. I am quite wimpy.

The first night was interesting too. My shoes got wet getting water from the nearby pond so I kept them outside the tent. The next morning they were frozen solid. I couldn’t fit my feet into them until I brought them into my sleeping bag and squished them to break up the ice. Besides the shoes, instead of dew on the tent it had ice. What fun!?!

It was peaceful hiking then I would be surprised by a fellow hiker along the trail. Over the trip I met 1 thru-hiker traveling south, 5 day hikers, and 7 overnight hikers. Oh, and a Boy Scout troop hiking the trail. Compared to my West Virginia trip, this was a busy but very flat easy hike.

The most interesting encounter was a place called Hidden Pond. The locals hike out to this camping spot. I was there to fill up on water when I noticed 5 teenagers preparing to camp. There were reports of an aggressive bear there just a few days ago. I warned them but being teenagers, they felt they could fight the bear or something. The next morning they hadn’t seen the bear but had heard it. Nope...I was happy to be camping elsewhere.

I didn’t see that many animals: sandhill cranes, egrets, herons, deer, and squirrel. I also saw bear scat and bobcat tracks.

Went through one area that had a controlled burn 4 days before. A few logs were still smoking.

With 50’s most days, the hiking was good. No sweating! So, an enjoyable trip.

Island Adventures

I’ve been visiting Cumberland Island for the last few years in October (1, 2, 3, 4). However, with the government shutdown I had to delay it. December was definitely different from October. It was colder (and I wasn’t quite prepared for early morning temperatures) but also much less crowded (which I liked). The campgrounds were maybe one-third full with fewer day trip people. Matter of fact, the ferry doesn’t run two days a week so us campers pretty much had the island to itself.

Perhaps it was because there were so few people, but everyone seemed so friendly. We exchanged stories of animal sightings and “secret” places to visit. I learned where to find fossil shark’s teeth though I found more fossil bones than teeth. I even borrowed someone’s phone to text John since their AT&T had service while my Verizon had nothing. A couple campers told me about the orange and grapefruit trees that had ripe fruit in one of the campgrounds. They say they grew from seeds that campers spit out. Online, it seems it might be seeds spread by birds from citrus trees grown as a cash crop. Who knows?

As far as animals, I saw 3 dolphins on the ferry ride.

When you hear a noise in the trees on Cumberland Island, it can be an armadillo, deer, raccoon, squirrel, wild pig, or a wild horse. I saw all of these this week. (They say there are bobcats on the island but I haven’t spoke to anyone who saw one.) I only saw a few deer. Most ran before I could get a good picture.

Armadillos were everywhere. Technically, this is a nine-banded armadillo. See the tail.

In previous visits, I only saw a few wild pigs. On just one hike in the North section of the island, I saw 13 different pigs. All stared at me for awhile then ran away.

The horses may be the most dangerous animals on the island. You are supposed to stay a school bus length from them though they sometimes walk up closer than that. They tell a story about a lady getting too close trying to get a selfie. The horse kicked her and she had to be life-flighted off the island. Then her insurance wouldn’t pay for the helicopter so she had to pay the $20,000 for the helicopter herself. Scary story, but I can’t find that it really happened by googling it, so who knows.

I’ve wanted to see the North section in previous visits but was either unprepared for the hike or the area was closed due to hurricane damage. I finally got there! There is a wonderful campground 10.5 miles north of the ferry landing. The campground is big enough and full of trees so that I didn’t even realize there were people at three other campsites until I wandered along the trail. At any time, horses may wander through the campground.

The sunsets every night was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures can’t convey the colors.

Of course, I had to do some general hiking. Overall, I hiked more than 40 miles over the 5 days. But much of my hiking was in the North section where the trails aren’t very clear. There are no blazes. The poorly marked human trail and the easy to see horse paths cross so I wandered off the official path several times. On one trail I ended up fighting my way through saw palmettos that scratched me. Turns out that a guy I talked to on the ferry back got lost on a trail and was scratched up by saw palmettos too. BTW, this picture was another trail with saw palmettos just on the side.

But I finally got to the church that’s 15 miles from the dock. It was a church, school, and meeting place for the black population that lived here through the 1900’s. It was also the location of the 1996 wedding of John F. Kennedy, Jr. I finally did it!

Stories from a Cruise

John and I took a short cruise on a Norwegian ship from our local Jacksonville port to the Bahamas. Some stories:

Our first stop was at Freeport at Grand Cayman Island. The last cruise also stopped here when we took an excellent excursion. This time we just walked 1.5 miles to a lighthouse then back. We thought we’d be the only ones silly enough to do this walk, but there was an older gentleman using a cane that did the same walk. So no complaining about the distance!

The second stop was supposed to be at their private island. We had an excursion booked for us to zipline, which is on my bucket list. Unfortunately, the water was too rough and the island was skipped. I will get that ziplining done sometime!

The third stop was Nassau. We walked about 3 miles around the town seeing a museum, old buildings, and a distillery. The difficult part is that sidewalks seems pretty optional in this old section of town. We had to walk along fairly busy traffic in some places but still a pretty town.

I thought that the most exciting part of the trip was at the Nassau port. We went out on our balcony to watch the ship get ready to leave port. Somehow, I locked the door behind me as I stepped out. So, the two of us were stuck on the balcony with no way to get back into our room and our room marked as “Do Not Disturb”! After shouting for help for awhile, someone on the level above us heard. They tried using their phone to call to help us, but couldn’t get anyone to answer. Finally, someone on our level and about 5 rooms from us stepped out to their balcony. They were able to get the steward to come to our room to unlock the door. It may have been only 10-15 minutes, but it was exciting!!!

More relaxing pictures.

The Cursed Trail

In honor of Halloween, I present the ‘Cursed Trail’. The full trail I had selected is around 90 miles taking 6 days.

- I first hiked 45 miles of the trail in February while experiencing cold nights, high water on the trail, and hiking in the smoke near a controlled burn. 

- The 2^nd time was about 60 miles in December. In this case I stopped after hearing that the last section was closed due to fallen trees from 2 hurricanes.

- The 3^rd time was only 35 miles in March. That time the river level was 66’ which flooded many crossings making it unsafe for me to try, especially hiking alone. 

This time I still didn’t make the full distance. I made my personal best for this trail of 70 miles over 5 days though. The first section was fine. While the last section of the trail is officially open and much work has been done to clear or mark much of the trail, there were LOTS of down trees still on the trail. As one hiker on the map app commented, it’s a full body workout. I had to crawl under, climb over, and/or walk around lots of trees all while wearing a backpack. I had to use the map app to find my way back to the trail quite a few times.

The problem was that finding the trail again wasn’t very obvious. Much of the trail consisted of a thin trail but mostly high grass and weeds. By going in October, plants haven’t died back yet. There is a plant called Devil's beggarticks. While pretty when flowering, the seed is barbed so they catch on animals who disperse them. My clothes were completely covered with these barbs. One evening I spent an hour removing the large portion of the seed from my clothes but the smaller barbs stayed in making the clothes scratchy the next day.

I finally reached the point where I realized that while the view of the river was gorgeous, the extra work and stress of going around down trees made the hike “not fun”. All the bushwhacking meant I was only covering half the distance I expected. I called John so he could pick me up a day early. Turns out I also had a problem with my cell phone that prevented me from charging it. I would have run out of power that last day. Oh, and I found out I had 3 small holes in my tent. Ants or sand fleas must have come in the last night to bite me. I had lots of bug bites the last day.

On the good side...The river level was much lower this time. Instead of the 66’ when the trail was flooded, it was only 50’. This first picture was where the board bridge were flooded in March. This time (2^nd picture), there was absolutely no water under the crossing.

For cool animals, I saw a coyote step out on the trail ahead of me. He walked ahead of me then turned to notice me for the first time and quickly ran off. I also saw a cottonmouth (water moccasin) on a creek near where I was filtering water. No issue there either.

Some pretty pictures too. THIS is why I like hiking!

Reunions

My college friends got together this week in Columbus Ohio. I flew up then Leslie and Mark picked me up at the airport. They drove to Alum Creek State Park so we could hike and talk while we waited until we could check into the hotel.

They reserved a suite which became our “party room”. We spent every evening reminiscing, sharing pictures, telling stories, and laughing. Oh, and pretend flirting with the pizza delivery man until we found out he was still in high school!

We did a tour of American Whistle Corp. They are the only company in the U.S. who make metal whistles. As engineers we internally critiqued the tour guide’s talk (no, they didn’t extrude metal but were actually stamping, forming and shearing). Otherwise, it was a great tour even with the kids loudly using their free whistles at the end of the tour.

Our original plan was to go to the Columbus Zoo but it rained heavily so we toured the Ohio Statehouse. The end of the tour was quite memorable as we walked back to our cars that was a half a block away through heavy rain and ankle deep puddles. The time before supper was spent hanging up wet clothes and using the hair dryer as needed.

The next day started with a tour of Anthony-Thomas Candy. They have a ‘sweet’ set up with a closed in balcony all around the plant so tours can watch the operation. No pictures are allowed in the plant but it was quite interesting. There might have been excessive candy and chocolate purchasing at the end.

The afternoon was a visit to the Columbus Botanical Gardens. For me, I enjoyed the demonstration on glass making the best. You then find gorgeous glass sculptures among the gardens. We finished the day at Schmidt’s Sausage Haus Restaurant.

The next day most of our group left but Doreen and Bill drove in to stay the night. We haven’t got together since July 2018. We spent a day basically just talking though with a visit to the local mall just to walk around.

Great week!