Florida Trail: Day 24 – 27
January 30 – Feb 2, 2022
Mile: 145.0 to 167.0 (22.0 miles)
Start: Best Western, Okeechobee, FL
Finish: Yates Marsh South, Kissimmee River, FL
After a few days of rest, relaxation and work, Shannon and I woke up not very early and first thing we did was grab some brekkie from the hotel of sausage, eggs, bacon, apples and oatmeal. We promptly returned to the room to watch the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett. It was awesome and we couldn’t stop talking about how good the story was getting. Then we packed up and left town, catching a ride with the only Uber driver in town: our main man Brian. He picked us up again after having picked us up several times for an AYCE (all you can eat) deep southern buffet, the post office and Walmart. Somehow Shannon found $40 in cash under Brian’s driver’s seat and handed it to him. He was very excited and said he was going to take his wife out to dinner tonight with it and then play pool tonight in his pool league. Apparently a couple nights ago he got his butt kicked by a girl and she took him for all he was worth so he’s looking to make some money back. Good luck buddy!
We got dropped off in an RV park that we’d walked past the other day when we’d come off trail to eat at the hilarious Ding-a-ling Deli. Shannon picked up another liter of water from the sinks and headed out into the bike path which was very busy today. Lots of people whizzed by on electric bikes, some of whom were trying to convince themselves they were getting exercise as the motor pedaled them down the completely flat bike path. Others walked their tiny fluffy dogs which seems to be what’s in vogue with retiree vacationer crowds here.
As we were walking, we spotted someone up ahead who resembled the definition of “Hiker Trash” which, despite sounding negative, is an honorary title for long distance hikers. It turns out it was our friend Pine Stick who is very talkative and very cool. He had just spent 10 days hiking with Father Will who was a hermit priest who wanted to try his hand at thru-hiking. He was a friend of Pine Stick’s friend or something and despite him not being very religious, he said he sure did learn a lot as we had also experienced Father Will could talk nonstop 8 to 10 hours a day. He also had performed a full religious mass every night, having packed out the bread and the wine in a flask often praying for hikers whom he’d met on the trail. Seems like Father Will had traveled all over the place and I don’t really understand how the whole hermit thing ties in because he’s been up to the Arctic with the Inuit, lived in the tropical paradise of St. Lucia in the Caribbean for several years, journeyed into Israel and now after hiking part of the Florida Trail was going to sail the Caribbean on a 95 foot yacht that his brother takes care of. Who knows?
Anyways Pine Stick was overjoyed to see other hikers as he seemed a little bit down after Father Will had left in back in the little town of South Bay. The Florida Trail is not a very social trail with few hikers completing the trail every year. We stayed and hiked with Pine Stick, chatting with him for about an hour about our journeys so far. He was so excited that we had seen bobcats the other night and he said he saw an armadillo the other day which he’s never seen in his life. Just as Pine Stick was telling us he never saw any animals, we were walking and saw what appeared to be an enormous rock that was actually moving quite fast through the grass. It turns out it was this crazy turbo-charged tortoise the size of a basketball running through the field. Mr. Tortoise did not give a crap that we were there, his meaty front claws propelling him forward with gusto as he tore up the ground leaving a small dust cloud behind him. Later on we found out that it was a Gopher Tortoise which are so rare that they’re borderline endangered. These spunky critters call the southeast’s sand hills and dunes that are often developed and plowed over for commercial and residential developments their home. Pine Stick was simply radiant as we helped him see some of the animals around him and he took videos to send to his grandkids who love seeing the Florida Trail’s wildlife.
Pine Stick looked pretty beat as he had been hiking in the hot exposed bike path of Lake Okeechobee all day and said he was going to go get some water and take a break at the restrooms near the boat launch in the distance. We said goodbye to him and said we’d probably see him up ahead because we like to hike bigger miles and then take a break in town.
Shannon and I continued along a dusty canal next to the Kissimmee River which has been straightened out because hydrologists back in the day didn’t understand the negative environmental effects of straightening a river, especially when it comes to flooding and erosion. It was very exciting when we hit a turn of the river and it was a highlight of our afternoon. Other highlights included searching for a rock that was one of the landmarks on our navigation app but we couldn’t find it because the rock was flush with the ground. How exciting…
I listened to murder podcasts and Shannon to his audiobook and soon the sunny dry canal turned onto a road where we took a break under the shade some massive live oak trees. I had run out of water about a mile and a half back and we had read in our navigation app that on occasion the Lockkeeper who managed the boat traffic in the canal sometimes is nice and will give thirsty Florida Trail hikers bottled water if you asked nicely. You could also filter water from the alligator-filled canal but you want to avoid doing that because of chemical and animal feces contamination from the farmland up north. We were a little nervous when we went and knocked on the Lockkeeper’s door but it turned out he was a very nice Air Force veteran who said he keeps bottled waters especially for hikers and each gave us each a half liter of water. Worried that we were going to filter water from the canal to drink, he was adamant to not drink the canal water as he doesn’t even like washing his hands with it. It must be pretty polluted from all the runoff from the agriculture and pesticides for this guy who has been sitting on the lock for who knows how many years to say he doesn’t even like touching the water.
We thanked the Lockkeeper for the bottled waters and he suggested that instead of drinking poisoned canal water that we should stop at the water cooler 1 mile north where a local Trail Angel had set out gallon jugs of potable tap water and sometimes treats for the hikers. Then we sat in the shade, cooling off from the hot walk and ate a snack of chicken wings that we had packed out which were delicious. They tasted even better under the shade of a live oak tree covered with streamers of Spanish moss and with a slight breeze coming off the river. It was great because now we’ve headed so far north that we’ve reached the part of the trail where you can safely sit under the trees without having to worry about going into anaphylactic shock or having poisonous sap burn your backpack or clothes like I had already done.
We each put electrolyte drink mix in our water bottles, chugged that down and then packed up. The cows in the meadow next to us bellowed and mooed as the nearby clatter from the levee construction of dump trucks pouring gravel rang out sharply in the distance. Seems like they’re always repairing the canals and rivers here but I guess when you’re working to fix the flawed work of those who came before you who tried to halt and harness the unstoppable forces of the water. Straightening the massive Kissimmee River or the flow of the Everglades is one of those things you look back on the hubris of humanity and in the future just budget money and resources to be making a lot of improvements and fixing the errors of the past.
We headed up the road and sure enough a mile north the Trail Angels who lived nearby had put out water in a cooler for us hikers. We were so overjoyed that we danced and came to find out he had also put a couple of bananas in there and some Valentine’s Day sour gummy hearts which were gluten-free. When we were done filling up our water for the next long waterless stretch ahead we kept expressing our excitement at coming across our first trail magic cooler of the trail. Thank you Trail Angel Joel! Trail Angel Joel’s horses looked at us funny when we danced but didn’t seem to mind and we waved to them and they just neighed and continued grazing.
The trail took us past our first orange grove and some turf farms where they grow grass for golf courses and lawns. The citrus grove looked very tempting but it’s illegal to pick oranges unless they’ve fallen onto public property like a sidewalk or road. We had a 4 mile road walk as the sun was starting to set and it was pretty but you also had to dodge some cars that made you feel like they were actively trying to run you over or dump their diesel exhaust on you. We waved to a nice guy who had just arrived home from work and he said he was very excited to have some house time after a long day, grabbing his mail and telling us to be safe out here. We passed another Trail Angel water cooler but since we’d already filled up on water we continued on.
The trail turned down a very rural old farm road bordered by thick cabbage palms and live oak hammocks. I’m not sure why they call clusters of oak trees “oak hammocks” down here but basically it’s just a group of old, pretty trees that provide shade and dry ground. It was starting to get pretty dark now so we took out our headlamps not a moment too soon as cars sped towards us in the dimming light. Our navigation app said that there was water over here but it was in the ditch and it looks super gross, especially since there were rib cages and carcasses littered in the dark water of the muddy ditch. Maybe the skeletons belonged to a couple of deer but I didn’t want to go in the ditch to get water because there’s probably an alligator that dragged the deer in and ate them. Who knows? Creepy!
The sun was down and we still had about 20 minutes of light left when Shannon jumped out of the way into the road yelling.
“Snake! Snake!!!” He shouted. A small snake slithered across the warm pavement, its back colored with diamond shaped brown and black patterns. To me it looked like a venomous water moccasin (aka cottonmouth) and it wasn’t very big which makes the snake all the more dangerous. When I lived in Mississippi, a couple of locals told me that the young snakes don’t know how to control their venom when they bite so they just release all of the venom which can be infinitely worse for you than if you get bitten by an adult snake.
We went from spacing out to on high alert when all of a sudden another 2 or 3 foot long snake in the middle of the road raised its diamond-shaped head at us. Carefully we shied away from the agitated venomous snake but sadly for the snake (but good for us) it looked like it had just gotten run over, its tail pinned to the pavement in a pulpy mess so thankfully it wasn’t going to be chasing us anywhere. Another few steps forward and there was another baby snake curled up in a circle. To our left a thin snake slithered onto the warm road and to our right another 2 foot long snake stretched out and waggled its head towards us. All of a sudden within 5 minutes we were dodging venomous cottonmouths left and right as the little guys came out of the ditch and laid out on the warm pavement of the road. It was freakin crazy! We would look down at our feet and there would be another snake in front of us so we would shuffle to the side and another snake from the ditch would slither out. In the dimming light, even the pavement’s tar pattern looks kind of like a snake curled up and so we get on edge and move over to where there was actually a live snake that was curled up. In only a few minutes we must’ve walked past at least 12 or 15 baby cottonmouths and it seriously felt like we were in that Indiana Jones movie scene where Harrison Ford gets tossed in the snake pit. There were so many damn snakes everywhere that we realized we must’ve come up on a cottonmouth nest since they were all pretty little, which was kind of freaky. The black paved road was warm from the sunny afternoon and the venomous snakes couldn’t resist.
I know this is messed up but fortunately for us, the cars coming by drove over a whole bunch of the snakes. Some of the snakes that you thought were coming after you or that would lunge at you wouldn’t be able to actually move because they’d been partially run over. Unfortunately more than a few hadn’t been run over yet and would actually chase us and others would just lurch their heads at us but couldn’t move because their back tail was flattened on the pavement. It was pretty crazy and we ran, jumped and got the hell out of the snake pit yelling and cursing this freakin trail. Luckily we made it out without being bitten or having to take an impromptu to the hospital. The going rate for a vial of antivenom is anywhere from $1500 to over $3500 and the amount of doses of antivenom needed to treat a venomous snake bite can send unlucky victims hospital bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sickening.
Thankfully we put the cottonmouth nest of horrors behind us as it really started getting dark. The trail took us past several houses where dogs were barking but luckily they were in pens and gated up so the dogs couldn’t get out and chase us. One house must’ve been a dog breeder because it sounded like there were over 50 dogs barking at us. The noise was deafening and I honestly don’t know how those people live there with all that racket from their animals.
We crossed into the beginning of State Park land and saw a couple guys with headlamps next to the river either catfishing or frog gigging. Shannon and I looked ahead, not wanting to deal with any more headlamp drama like last night and let them be. The pavement dissolved into fine soft sand that made for slow going but we soon ducked down onto a packed trail through the prairies and through the jungly woods for another half mile to the campsite. I was hoping we would stay on more of a wide open trail like the canals today but nope, we went straight through the jungle.
Burnt orange eyes glowed from a tree branch above us, the critter staring down at us as the unmoving animal froze. Slightly panicked from the stupid snake nest, we both hoped this was just a raccoon or opossum and not a panther. Regardless, we talked loudly to scare up anything we might come across and at one point definitely rustled up a huge boar or bear that thundered through the dark brush as it heard us yelling. We clicked our hiking poles together screaming loudly and hollering for whatever the animal was to get on out of here. Whatever the massive thing was, it took off through the woods away from us. We figured it was probably a wild pig because it sounded like there were a few of the creatures running about together and the wild pigs usually travel in packs at night, digging up roots and tubers.
Soon enough, we arrived at the Yates Marsh South campground where you can stay if you have a free permit to camp there. We were hoping to have the place to ourselves but when we went to reserve the permit online earlier today, it looked like the place was reserved already and we figured that we’d probably run into people there since someone had already reserved it. We hoped that they didn’t mind sharing because we were exhausted and could only reserve a permit for the Yates Marsh North campsite and just hoped that we didn’t have to go another 13 miles on our first day back on the trail. Luckily it wasn’t a big hunting party or group camping and it was maybe only a couple people already set up. They kept their distance, sitting next to the fire pit across the large campsite and we stayed near a picnic table where we ate a bag of salad and avocado and some dried fruit.
As we rolled into the campsite area we definitely scared up a whole mess of raccoons or armadillos or something because those things scattered all over the grounds and trees. The creatures were chittering which made me think they were raccoons. Shannon was so eager to catch a glimpse of the animal and finally was treated to a raccoon sighting when he spotlighted the creature up in the live oak branches.
With all the critter activity around us we knew we were going to need to hang up our food but luckily there were some nice strong oak branches and we strung up our food, trash, smelly soaps and cooking pots. Then it was time for bed where we promptly fell asleep, occasionally being woken up by a couple of chubby raccoons circling the campsite or digging in the bushes looking for food. Someone had brought a bunch of water bottles out to the campsite and we definitely heard the coons trying to get their hands on the water and plastic wrap. Usually I feel like I’d be a little bit anxious with all of the animals running around in the dark but I feel like we’ve been exposed to so much wildlife so far on this trail that it’s just like whatever. It was just raccoons and our food was hung up and we couldn’t do much more about it.
I was actually thankful for the ruckus that they caused because what would really freak me out would be if the forest went silent and all the animals went quiet because that means there’s a large predator like a panther in the area. Two packs of coyotes howled and yipped as they hunted on either side of our campsite. Luckily they stayed far away and the dogs from the neighboring farm barked at their wild brethren if they got too close.
