Florida Trail: Day 30
Feb 5, 2022
Mile: 207.0 to 226.2 (19.2 miles)
Start: Cowboy Crossing, Kissimmee Prairie Preserve
Finish: Ghost town of KICCO Campground
The morning was overcast gray when we woke and still thick and sticky with humidity. It hadn’t rained during the night like it had been forecasted and we decided to pack up and get going before all of our gear got drenched. Our food was still hanging up when we had woken up which was a relief. During the night the twanging sound of what I thought was an animal messing with our bear line hanging our food bag which turned out to be just a critter hitting the cabbage palm leaves. The broad cabbage palms are surprisingly loud when you rustle them and it sounds like someone shaking a sheet of tin foil or parchment paper or striking a taut drum.
The three other hikers had woken up halfway through us packing and the dad was very nice and chatted with us about the Florida Trail and his plans for coming out here for just the weekend. His daughter was quiet and her boyfriend was kind of a dbag with a dirt stache, bragging about being in the Boy Scouts many years ago amongst other things. Cool stories, bro, tell it again. He was super obnoxious so we were excited to leave him as he loudly commented about our choice of tent and gear. We packed up and got out of camp, heading back to the muddy trail through the prairie land and swamp. On our way out we caught a glimpse of 4 small deer grazing on the side of the trail.
The sky started spitting and then a proper drizzle came down so I threw my camera in my bag and we donned our rain jackets as the much anticipated deluge started. The rain started pouring in full force sending sideways rain and upside down rain towards us. My new rain jacket from ultralight cottage gear manufacturer Enlightened Equipment is amazing and has been keeping me dry throughout all of this forecasted rain where the predicted 0.1in turns out to be a couple of inches instead.
The wind was blowing wildly and we heard some weird rumbling in the distance that we thought was maybe thunder. We couldn’t figure out what it was until far off in the distance we saw it looked like a massive cherry picker machine lumbering towards us. It turned out to be a real life swamp buggy with a tour going on in the pouring rain. We’d never seen one in motion and stepped aside to let the massive tricked out and jacked up truck with no roof come through. Surprisingly despite the rain there were about a dozen tourists sitting on the swamp buggy tour. We waved to them and they looked happy and were wearing smiles despite being completely soaking wet. One of them shouted to us, “What are you doing out here in the rain?” Well we could ask the same to you sir!
The swamp buggy rambled on through the meadows and had even packed down the stiff grassy trail for us which was nice. On either side of the trail were large black pools and dark ponds that were a little too close for comfort, especially when our navigation app comments warned us to be wary of large alligators next to or on the trail here. Because it was raining, the alligators that would’ve been hanging out on the edge of the Florida Trail were now underwater or submerged. Fabian from the Miccosukee people told us that surprisingly alligators really don’t like rain and we were glad it was a little bit colder and a little bit drizzly just to keep them from surprising us. I mean the water where they were lurking was maybe 8 or 10 feet from us and with some of these gators being 12 feet or more, it’s a little scary to think they could cover that distance in one lurch of their bodies.
We left the scary swamps and arrived at the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve campground where we spotted a group of turkeys digging up bugs and having a great time in the rain. At the park ranger office we chatted with the ranger and settled up for our campsite last night as it was by the honor system you pay $5.50 each for staying overnight. In the office Ranger Camaro took our money and gave us some good advice about the conditions of the upcoming terrain. He said it probably wasn’t too badly flooded but gave us some secrets to avoiding walking through waist deep water and instructions on how to dodge the worst of it. In the office we looked around at all the rattlesnake skins, animal photos and night skies snapshots in the park. This is one of the darkest places in the whole state of Florida which is really cool and they even host astronomy parties on the weekends in the winter. I’m sure they might’ve had a little bit of one last night before the clouds rolled in but it’s really cool to see some of the photos that amateur and professional photographers had taken.
After lingering in the warmth of the office for as long as possible, we went outside and sat huddled close together for body warmth eating snacks as the wind and the cold wet rain blew down on us even under the cover of the roof, making us shiver. The body heat really made a big difference and we ate whatever snacks we could shovel down quickly. Down the hatch went scoops of straight peanut butter, quasi mushy Fritos and soggy trail mix and Shannon ate his signature 4 or 5 granola bars at a time.
The park ranger came out and said he forgot to tell us to watch out for rabid animals as in the past week a camper was not only bit by a rabid skunk but, to add insult to injury, the skunk also sprayed him. The park ranger said that they could smell the man coming a long way before they saw him and he was instructed to go to the hospital to start his rabies shots. Having met quite a handful of people on the Appalachian Trail who had encounters with being bitten or scratched by rabid animals, the series of shots does not sound like a fun experience. You have to get these long needles injected into you over a series of weeks or months and can’t skip any parts of the treatment or it’s not going to be good. If you don’t get your first shot within something like 72 hours it’s really bad and you can die from rabies because there is no cure for treating it once it’s advanced. It’s 100% fatal so the trick is to not get bit in the first place.
Just as the Ranger told us to watch out for small mammals, we thanked him and I turned around to see a small black and white mammal with four legs running towards me. I definitely screamed and then realized it was someone’s Chihuahua and we all laughed. It was one of the park volunteer’s pets whose name was Sam and he was quite cute looking for butt scratches and pets.
After Sam, the volunteer and ranger went inside, Shannon used the bathroom as I stood inside the bathroom just to get out of the wind and the cold rain. It was warm in the bathroom and then when I went back outside to look at my phone something caught my eye in the navigation app that indicated that this park was the last place on earth where the wild Carolina Parakeet had been seen before it went extinct. I remember learning about all the animals that went extinct because of humans when I was a kid and clearly recall hearing about the Carolina Parakeet in the Kissimmee Preserve because mostly it sounded like a hilarious quasi-romantic place to me and my classmates’ six-year-old brains.
I went back into the ranger’s office and asked him more about the Carolina Parakeet. Ranger Camaro said that Kissimmee Nature Preserve was the place where the last wild Carolina Parakeet on earth was ever seen. He said in 1918 that they had park rangers guarding the last nest around the clock, even marking the nest and eggs because even on the brink of extinction poachers were still trying to make a buck or two off of the bird’s beautiful feathers used mainly for the hat industry. The ranger said that the numbers of Carolina Parakeets essentially went from the millions to the next to nothing in an extremely short amount of time. The parakeets were the only native parrot to the United States and in the 1800s their beautiful feathers were coveted in the clothing industry. The demand for the feathers was so great that hunters will go out and return with hundreds if not thousands of parakeets just for their jeweled feathers. Unfortunately, the Carolina Parakeet had the habit of flocking so if one parakeet was shot by a hunter and went down, the rest of the flock would gather around it. Feather hunters could essentially harvest hundreds of birds at one time by just shooting one.
The last captive parakeet died in 1938 and is a story to hold dearly to us humans as a warning of how quickly a beautiful animal that numbered in the millions can become extinct with the lack of protective measures in place. It’s a story of how the greed of an industry can wipe out an entire species. Outside the ranger office was a statue called “The Last Carolina Parakeet” whose beak points in the direction of where the last wild nest of the parakeet existed. It’s a pretty sobering story and I couldn’t believe we were in the area where the last parakeet was seen over 100 years ago. It was truly sad and yet amazing that we’ve learned so much from our mistakes since then and protections for wild plants and animals have come so far, yet still have so far to go. Looking out over the wild grasslands, you could tell how rich in wildlife this place was, with many types of animals calling it home. Today the endangered grasshopper sparrow lives in the park and conservationists hope that setting aside vast tracts of land away from farming, industrial or commercial use will help protect the diverse and rare wildlife species for the future.
We left the park after chatting with the Ranger Camaro and the volunteer about the parakeets and adventures on the Pacific Crest Trail and headed back into the blustery day. The trail mainly followed a two lane road that was gravel at points but mostly grass, mud and sand that was wide enough for the swamp buggy to go through. The deepest water we had to cross was only knee-deep thankfully. We didn’t know if gators were lurking underneath so with our feet treading as lightly and quickly as we could to stay atop the tangled mass of knotgrass, we moved in a way to create minimal splashing. The thick tangled weeds made the slough ahead of us look like nothing more than a field until your feet step on the floating mat of grass and then plunge into the refreshingly cold water. Other than that we were able to dodge the pooling water and I felt lucky as hikers even a few weeks ago were having to hike through some really nasty conditions with water up to their chest and losing the trail as it had flooded over Christmas and New Year’s.
Shannon and I followed the fence line and came to an old campsite with a water pump where we sat and cooked up some risotto for lunch. I had an appetizer of ranch flavored tuna fish packet and Shannon had some more snacks as we waited for the risotto to cook. The water was clear and fresh and for me when I pumped it out of the creaky water pump I think the sound reminded me of my great grandma’s old house in Ohio. When Shannon went to go pump I guess the water was bringing up mysterious black chunks and he got kind of mad but after getting a bit of an arm workout the water ran clear again. Maybe it was just iron chunks and we could use an extra helping for all of our physical activity. This spot where we were eating lunch was where last week a girl saw her first panther ever. Yikes! We talked about how creepy it would be camping under the shade of the Spanish moss in the oak trees and in the middle of the night if you heard the pump creaking. It was kind of spooky out and overcast but good hiking weather and we didn’t linger as it’s pretty chilly with the winds coming across the prairie.
We hiked up a fence line, scaring up some cattle who didn’t like the looks of us in our weird backpacks and hiking poles and took off mooing. Under a deer stand and animal feeder you could see a couple of sandhill cranes with their crazy velociraptor sounding calls and beautiful plumage alongside three or four deer feeding near the feeder. It was cool to see all the animals hanging out like it was Snow White’s forest or Bambi and friends frolicking in the woods. Shortly after the cute animals party, the ground was churned up again pretty badly from wild pigs. I was hiking with one headphone in listening to an audiobook and one out and was glad I did so because ahead on the trail I heard faint squealing and snuffling coming up. I stopped in my tracks and sure enough, not even 40 feet from us was a mama pig with her babies nursing while she was eating grass and digging up roots. You could hear off in the bushes another bunch of wild pigs and it was a little nerve-racking trying to navigate around here without having the mama pigs become aggressive and charge us. They weren’t the biggest pigs we’ve ever seen, they are still probably 60 or 70 pounds with a bunch of babies in tow. We made a lot of noise which scared them off but it still got kind of dicey for a while as baby pigs ran behind us and some ran in front of us and the mamas charged ahead leading their packs of piglets.
We didn’t know how many pigs were in the bushes as they continued pouring out of the grass and brush, all sizes and different fur colors with some squealing, some silent, some snorting and huffing agitatedly. But we just kept yelling and clicking our hiking poles together to shoo the feral hogs away from us. As the wild pigs kept running around us in a mini stampede, I couldn’t help thinking about Game of Thrones and how that drunken king guy Robert Baratheon got stabbed by a wild boar tusk and died. We weren’t gonna let that happen and hiked out of the area as fast as we could to get away from the Porkocalypse. The baby pigs were pretty cute though and some of them were tan with black spots, others speckled and a caramel and brindle color. The piglets were tiny, some about the size of Chihuahuas. It was crazy how fast the wild pigs breed as the pig moms didn’t look to be that old and were probably on their second or third litters.
We exited pig land and spilled out onto a dirt road that crossed the notorious Kissimmee River locks. The Lockkeeper used to require you to call a phone number to have someone open the locks to cross the river. I think with enough hikers out on the Florida Trail now that the lockkeepers got sick of the foot traffic that now they’ve just posted signs where to go if you’re a hiker and created a nice little walkway complete with big footsteps to follow.
After the canal lock we were spit out onto a massive cattle ranch where at first I thought the cows were a herd of black bears. The cattle stared at us unmoving as they sized us up, most of them had babies that were pretty young so they were kind of aggressive and standoffish. It was a little intimidating hiking through the angry mama cattle but we scared off a few of them. Some of the cows were kind of stubborn but we just kept yelling and clicking our hiking poles together and eventually they lumbered off into the fields.
On a side note for some reason the tops of my feet have recently been taking a beating from the trail probably from the combo of the sand, humidity and wet terrain. This trail has given me more blisters than any other trail I’ve ever hiked. Like it’s concerning that my toes are going to actually get infected from how worn and blistered they are from the dirty socks and all the sand coming in my shoes despite having gaiters and cleaning my feet as best I can each night. It was starting to be kind of painful walking through the cattle grazing land and cutting through groves of ancient live oaks draped with spanish moss.
Our plan was to camp another 5 miles ahead but ended up settling on camping at the old town of KICCO (pronounced “Kiss-o”, short for KIssimmee Cattle COmpany). This campground was only a few miles further where we hoped we’d find enough space to set up our little tent and rest my feet. We needed a free permit to camp here but unfortunately whatever the quota was for daily permits had filled up since it was a weekend night. Hopefully we could just find a spot anywhere and not be bothered by anybody partying or a ranger checking up on the campground.
Luckily when we arrived at the old ghost town, the place was sprawling and spread out with lots of large oak trees to hide our tent under. We even found a spot where we had a picnic table and nobody else was set up. My feet were a mess with blisters underneath blisters, the skin raw and peeling and my toes hurting which is not a good sign. Looking at how painfully red and purple my feet were, it probably means some of the raw skin was close to becoming infected. Tomorrow we only have 9 miles to go before taking a “near-o” (aka near zero miles of hiking or hiker slang for a low mileage day) at a ranch and I’m definitely going to thoroughly clean my feet up there. Maybe I can even dip them in the pool where hopefully the chlorine will dry them out.
Shannon and I set up our tent, hung our food and had a pretty chill night. We needed water and the comments in the navigation app said at this campsite to filter water from the river but to watch out for gators. While I limped around setting up tent and cooking, Shannon (bless him) walked to the water’s edge to scoop water and thankfully as he was nearing the boat dock, a guy in a van hollered at him to not go near the river. Apparently the Trail Angel had been watching a 10-foot-long alligator swim back and forth all day from the boat ramp and to the other side of the river. Now the alligator was submerged and the Trail Angel didn’t know where he was lurking and definitely didn’t want to see any Florida Trail hikers get snatched up by the massive reptile. He called Shannon to come over to his and his wife’s conversion van where he gave us 4 liters of water. Talk about Trail Magic! Having someone prevent Shannon from getting eaten by a gator nearly twice as long as we are tall is high up on our list of Trail Magic.
A bunch of cattle approached the campground, the moms and baby calves looking around inquisitively to see if the campground was safe enough for grazing. There were 4 or 5 RVs with some dogs that barked at the cows so the large bovines turned tail and returned back into the woods. Hopefully we wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night to cows chewing on our tent or get trampled by cattle while sleeping! As darkness fell, our bodies were well-tuned into the circadian rhythms of sunset and sunrise so we felt pretty tired. We tucked into bed, listening to the loud calls of the barred owls hooting at each other and the rustling scurrying of forest critters like raccoons and mice in the jungles behind us.
