Florida Trail: Day 32
Feb 7, 2022
Mile: 235.9 to 256.1 (+.7mi side trail for 20.9 total miles)
Start: Field camping next to horses, Westgate River Ranch Resort
Finish: Cowboy camping 3 stories high at Lake Jackson Tower
River Ranch Resort’s campground had emptied out pretty drastically yesterday so it had been a quiet night. The morning was foggy and misty, kind of a dull drab green color in the sky and our laundry that had been almost entirely dry when we had hung out on the line when we had gone to bed was now soaked. Oh well, I guess it’s just going to be one of those mornings where everything you put on is wet, clammy and cold. It’s not my favorite but you do what you have to do.
As we were sorting through our food drop and tearing away packaging our new water filter, I stepped away from the table for only a few seconds and an enormous 3.5-foot-tall sandhill crane came waltzing over to our table, very much unafraid of humans and very keen on helping itself to a snack. The large birds were way too accustomed to humans and I grabbed my trash bag liner to make myself look bigger, yelling and screaming at the crane to go away while shaking the trash bag. It was pretty reluctant to move and the giant bird kept making these velociraptor sounds as it pretended to slink away and try to come back on the other side of the picnic table. Shannon and I charged the sandhill crane together which for a moment didn’t seem to want to budge. I thought for sure the large avian was going to snap at us with its wickedly sharp beak. I didn’t realize these cranes, which we had thought were so elegant with their weird throaty cries and beautiful plumage, were actually giant human food thieves, closer to resembling aggressive dinosaurs than shy birds. They’re pretty tall with their 4 foot height and 6 foot wingspan and their cold black eyes, deep blood red crested head and long skinny legs resembling walking dinosaurs. And now we know that they’re not afraid of humans so that’s another wonderful thing in Florida that can probably kill you.
Eventually the sandhill crane left us and we ran into the same security guy again who had talked to me yesterday about the Florida Trail. It was a small world as we found out he was actually from Cape Cod which was fun as I was from the North Shore of Massachusetts and used to visit the Cape a lot to visit friends. He and his lady friend came over to see the horses in the pen next to our tentsite. The cute horses had been fed some oats earlier this morning as we’d been eating our own helping of human oats. We chatted about the Florida Trail and told the lady we were so proud of her for camping which we found out last night was her first night ever camping. We chatted with the couple a little bit about hiking, answering some questions and then finished packing up and headed back to the trail. Hopefully my feet (which were duct taped and bandaged) would hold up a little bit better today after showering yesterday.
The trail followed the dirt road out of the River Ranch Resort and we weren’t entirely sure of how to leave the resort the fastest way possible on foot. If we stuck to following the resort’s roads, we’d add on another .5 miles and being “efficient” hikers (aka lazy and wanting to walk no extra mileage when we didn’t need to) suspected there’s some sort of road that we could follow. Our shortcut road ended in a locked gate and we thought maybe we’d jump the gate or shimmy under the fence and toss our backpacks over. This place is crawling with security so of course as we steered off the main pathway someone immediately drove over to us in their golf cart and told us that management doesn’t like when you jump the fence so we followed him and he unlocked the gate for us to shortcut through a parking lot. We were escorted the “correct” way off the ranch by security and as we were leaving I got the vibe that the resort was giving the message, “Don’t let the gate hit you stinky hikers on the way out.” Maybe I’m just being paranoid but getting walked off the property by a security escort felt like it had a little more finality to it than walking off on our own terms.
We were about ½ mile from the entrance when Shannon realized he left behind his external battery pack. He dropped his backpack on the side of the road and ran back to the RV site where we had been borrowing electricity to charge our electronics and then came back without anyone even blinking an eye. As long as you’re quick enough it seems like you can get away with stuff at this ranch and he was in and out fast enough for nobody to notice him.
We walked down the road and a truck with an official looking symbol of the Florida watershed conservation area or something like that pulled over on the grass in front of us. The officer descended from his truck and walked across the street over to us. I gulped because I thought we were in trouble and Shannon and I traded sheepish glances. When he asked us what our plans were for the day, I got even more nervous because I didn’t want him to think we were trespassing even though we weren’t.
The conservation officer turned out to be a nice guy and it turns out he wanted to let us know that his team was going to ignite a controlled burn in the forest up ahead. We told him about how we’re hiking the Florida Trail and he wanted to make sure that we were going to be safe as we hiked today and didn’t get caught in the prescribed burn. The forestry services in Florida do quite a few prescribed burns as it clears the fast-growing jungles of brush and vines, providing animals like deer and turkeys with open land for grazing and foraging amongst the fire resistant oaks and pines. Our new conservation officer friend shared that the path of the prescribed fire would burn over the next section of the Florida Trail where we were headed. He assured us that if the fire got too close to us that he would drive us up the trail away from the burn but that if we saw flames that “you can just step over the fire.” What? I wasn’t out here to be living the real life version of firewalking and catch me some third degree burns. No thank you! He drove off to go prep his firefight for starting the controlled burn and as he left, we both looked at each other in horror, mouthing some expletives at how we weren’t going to be caught jumping over any fire.
When we crossed him back into the forest over a livestock fence, we soon ran into our forest officer friend’s truck again. He stopped and rolled down the window, showing us a map of where they were going to be lighting the fire pretty shortly. It sounded like once the fog burned off, helicopters were going to start flying overhead to keep an eye on the blaze and make sure that the fire didn’t jump the fire breaks (aka wide swaths of land cleared of vegetation to starve a fire of fuel, usually flat like forest roads or dug up dirt). Today the controlled burn would kill off about 1400 acres of non-native plants, leaving behind fire-resistant trees and clearing brush that could easily catch alight by lightning.
It seems like Florida has a very different approach to controlled burns than California does where last year on the Pacific Crest Trail we were constantly having to skip sections of trail that were on fire with us even getting wildfire smoke inhalation and entire communities having to be evacuated. For a long time, California forestry managers didn’t let the forests burn even though it was a naturally occurring event. All that fuel stacked up and now when there’s fires, they spiral out of control quickly and can’t be contained because the forest hasn’t been burned in so long. Some of the largest and most costly wildfires in US history have happened in the past decade on the west coast.
According to the Florida Forest Service website, they issue annual prescribed burn permits are issued in excess of 2.1 million acres which is a lot of land. On the other hand, California has so many restrictions and red tape on issuing burn permits so the air quality isn’t tainted that it’s difficult to clear the land of excessive fuel like dead logs, overgrown brush and dried plant matter. Even if you are issued a burn permit by the state of California and follow all of the regulations, if your fire gets out of control you are looking at enormous fines, paying for the cost of the fire damage and possible criminal charges. It was good that Florida was doing prescribed burns as even in their current dry season, we didn’t have to deal with hundreds of miles of trail closures or being evacuated due to fires.
We looked at our navigation app and found out that the prescribed burn area overlapped the Florida Trail for 2 miles so we told our forest officer friend that we’d be out of his hair in 40 minutes tops. He was glad because he didn’t think that he’d have to give us a ride around the prescribed burn section. We asked him all sorts of questions about how the prescribed burn fire is started. When we remarked about how cool of a job he had, he laughed and told us that he knew he had the best job ever!
Shannon asked if he could start the fire because if you don’t ask, you’ll never know the answer. The forest officer smiled kindly with a mischievous sparkle in his eye but said no. Oh well! I think the saying is something like, “You miss 100% of the wildfires you don’t ask to start.” Right? This morning the fire the forest service team was lighting was just a “small” test fire right where we were hiking. He said if it got out of control to just step over the flames. I’ve never been told that before by anyone and I don’t know if “Just step over the flames,” is really a legitimate piece of advice. We just took that as a sign to hike really fast out of here. The fire today was supposed to be started by little “ping-pong balls” which the firefighters nicknamed the spheres of potassium permanganate combined with ethylene glycol. However when we reached the bunch of firefighters hanging out near the start of the burn, one of the guys was on an ATV with not one but TWO flamethrowers which was super cool. We waved to them and hiked on quickly. No more than five minutes passed before we smelled smoke as double flamethrower guy lit that place up! The fire was burning through the dry invasive grasses insanely fast and headed towards our way. Luckily we got out just fine and it was cool to turn around and watch the smoke billowing in the treeline not far behind us. In the previous weeks, the firefighters had dug some fire breaks to make sure the controlled burn didn’t get out of control and set River Ranch Resort ablaze. Now they were getting to light stuff on fire which was really awesome.
As we hiked atop a small levee, the photos of what the place used to look like on our navigation app resembled absolutely nothing like what we were hiking on as it was so overgrown with grasses and plants that you couldn’t even see the cobblestone cement underneath our feet. We saw a big pond full of 2 or 3 foot long teenage gators and scared up quite a few as we walked by so that they dove into the water, splashing and submerging their bodies. It’s so difficult to see where the alligators are in the black water or hanging around the weedy shores that you just have to assume every body of water has alligators in it in Florida.
The trail popped out on busy Highway 60 where traffic zoomed by and our tummies rumbled with hunger so we stopped to have a quick lunch under the canal bridge like little bridge trolls. It was nice and cool under the shady bridge with a nice stiff breeze blowing under the canal and refreshing us from the heat of the sun and smokiness of the wildfire. We even were able to dry out our shorts and wet socks in the sunshine and enjoyed a yummy lunch that powered us through this next section of highway walking.
For the next 3 miles we were walking on a crazy busy highway with no shoulder and steep drainage ditches with 70mph trucks coming at us. The road walk sucked to put it plainly with the grass not having been mowed in a while and coming up to your knees with dead scratchy branches and all sorts of thick growth of weeds where you could barely see if there were snakes or anything underfoot. I saw a small snakeskin shed and a dried up dead alligator that had been hit by a car. It was probably about 6 or 7 feet long and probably did some serious damage to the undercarriage of whatever vehicle ran into it. The smell of death also hit us hard on the hot road walk as we jumped over the pedestrian bridge bordering the highway and we realized that we’d almost landed on a dead mummified bobcat which was sad and gross. I guess even the fast animals can’t outrun the traffic here. Roadkill + 70mph highway traffic + nowhere to walk = a typical day on the Florida Trail.
As the highway walk continued, we both had to go to the bathroom but couldn’t because both sides of the “trail” were working farms with people actually working on them amongst the busy highway traffic. As a guy Shannon had it way easier and managed to pee in the bushes without attracting much attention but I had to wait until the 3 highway miles were done and we got to a side road where there was much less traffic. It was kind of stressful highway walking and your whole body feels exhausted after walking in the hot sun for what felt like ages, your adrenaline pumping as distracted drivers on their cell phones swerved at you. You couldn’t even listen to an audiobook or music because the traffic noise was so loud, much less even hear what the person 5 feet from you was saying without yelling. Even when traffic wasn’t coming at you in the left lane, you couldn’t leave the weedy ditches to walk along the highway pavement because people in the right lane were passing traffic from behind you and would come really close to hitting you as they crossed lanes. It was not a fun time.
Finally we made it to the Three Lakes WMA (Wildlife Management Area) where we walked up on about two dozen unoccupied hunting trailers parked out in the grasslands. There was a vault toilet and a water pump and lots of places to hang a deer to skin and butcher the animal whose big hunting season had just ended. It was eerie that there were so many empty hunting shacks and trailers left here and felt kind of post-apocalyptic. It was definitely the kind of place you didn’t want to linger at, especially after sunset. We used the bathroom, ate a quick snack and somehow realized we’d gotten off trail slightly so we took the blue blazed trail in the parking lot back to the orange blazed FT. The blue blaze walked us through what was called “The Boneyard” where hunters disposed of all sorts of deer skeletons and half-rotted legs and bleached bones were strewn all over the place in various states of decay. I guess it’s good eating for scavengers like eagles, vultures and coyotes but it was a little creepy walking through an animal graveyard.
The WMA is land that you can hunt on during the proper open season and it seems like this place must get pretty busy as there were deer stands set up next on palm trees, in the prairies, woods line and just about everywhere in between. Luckily deer season had ended about two weeks ago so we didn’t have to worry about getting shot by overeager hunters while hiking. With deer hunting gun season, you just never know who is going to be out there shooting whatever moves or what state of sobriety they’ll be in. Best not to go walking during hunting season if you can help it and to always wear blaze orange.
As we strolled through the golden prairies interspersed with jagged stemmed saw palmettos, we saw a hiker up ahead which was exciting since we’ve hardly met anyone compared to other hiking trails in the past. It was our friend Pine Stick! He is a funny guy and was so pumped to see us having somehow gotten drunk this morning with some random Trail Angels and was only just sobering up around 4 PM. Hey, we get it! He must’ve passed us while we were eating lunch under the bridge earlier. He was overjoyed to see us again and he even met the same guy in the KICCO campground who had given Shannon drinking water and told him not to get water from the river because of the enormous resident alligator that was swimming there all day. Pine Stick, Princess and I chatted a bit to catch up on trail goss (gossip) and then headed out kicking it into high gear. Pine Stick was going to camp at Godwin Hammock only a couple miles ahead and we were going a little bit further to see if we could reach the magical three story treehouse that overlooked a couple of lakes.
According to the posted hunting tally signs at the WMA checkpoint, 64 deer had been harvested during the recent hunting season and even a 175lb wild pig. However there were still plenty of deer left out in the forest as we scared up more than a few as the light faded. The trail was mostly open prairie where the terrain underfoot was lumpy and hard like cement and you had to be pretty careful walking, making sure to lift your feet high every time you stepped or you’d roll your ankle. Random palm trees were scattered in tiny clusters in the distant fields and I was starting to get nervous about the trail conditions after the nearby campsite of Godwin Hammock. Our navigation app said that we were going to have to cross a deep slough that had lots of large alligators in it and explicitly warned hikers to be careful in this area and not to linger. Crossing a slough means you’re going to get your feet wet because you’re hiking through marshland, getting all close and personal with whatever is living in the water – fish, water beetles, snakes and alligators. Plus we’d be arriving at sunset when you’re warned to not be anywhere near the water as alligators might mistake you for prey like deer. Usually the navigation app doesn’t give you that much of a warning about the ubiquitous alligators but this one said specifically to be extra cautious. It was unnerving.
At Godwin Hammock we topped off on water from the campsite’s water pump, pleasantly surprised at how quickly our new Hydro Blu Versa filter processed backcountry water. Instead of 1L/4 hours (no joke) of our old Aquamira Frontier Max Red filter, our new Hydro Blu filter treated backcountry water at a 1L/min! It was truly game changing and we actually had to cut our snack break short because our water filter treated the water so quickly. Plus the Hydro Blu had a 100,000 gallon filter life (compared to 450 gallons of the Aquamira filter) and a modular attachment to filter chemicals from canal water because agricultural runoff in the water can make you sick and a normal water filter doesn’t remove pesticides and chemicals. Plus the 3 oz set up was less than $30 so that’s awesome.
At Godwin Hammock I ate a quick dinner of Spam packets with mustard, some dehydrated cheese (yes, it’s – real thing) and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. As we had a brief amount of time to pause at camp and collect our thoughts, we looked again at the upcoming water walking and realized that an actual road ran over the slough so we wouldn’t have to wade through the alligator-filled wetlands as the sun was setting. That made me feel a lot better because I think wading knee-deep through a blackwater swamp at sunset would just be a way to get yourself in trouble with some massive beast lurking from the Triassic Era. Hard pass on that!
As darkness settled in, we took out our headlamps to crush the next 4.7 miles to the Jackson Lake tower where supposedly you could get a great view of the stars from the 3 story tall treehouse. Technically you’re probably not allowed to camp in the treehouse but other hikers had done it and if you show up after dark when no one’s around and leave early enough you probably won’t get caught. It’s called stealth camping!
The next 4 miles flew by with crazy twists and turns through the jungle and we skimmed over the road where supposedly large alligators lurked in the slough. We definitely didn’t linger here long to see if we could spot the dark black hides of the gators against the ebony swampwater and inky blackness of the night sky. Also, who would have thought that the orange blazes marking the Florida Trail are extremely difficult to see at night? Not us! Luckily there were some reflective markings on the trees next to the blazes so those were able to catch our headlamps and make for easier nighttime navigation. We twisted and turned so much that a couple times we lost our way and had to stop to check our bearings. At one point we realized that we were on the wrong side of the road having taken a wrong turn and tried our best to navigate back in the dark before going too far off track. Hey, at least we had our GPS apps with us.
There sure were lots of critters out tonight and we scared up a couple of armadillos foraging in the grass and dirt for insects. You can tell they’re armadillos because when you yell at them the short little critters don’t really do much because they don’t have good hearing. Sometimes the armored snuffling critters jump straight up in the air when they see you which is kind of awesome. Most other mammals either freeze or run away from you when you yell at them. We also ran into a couple of opossums one of which “played possum” and pretended he was dead, leaning against a tree just standing frozen as he stared at us in complete shock.
Finally we arrived at the blue blazed side trail where we navigated our way through cow pasture and cypress trees until we were spit out onto a grassy forest road. As we were approaching the treehouse tower, something big and black moved through the tall dry grass next to Shannon. He started yelling, “Bear! Bear! Go away!” It turns out that it was just a grumpy sleepy cow that mooed deeply and slowly shuffled away through the grass away from our bright headlamps and loud voices towards pasture that was a little bit quieter for it to rest for the night. Sorry cow for disturbing your sleep!
We climbed up into the three-story tower carefully as the moon peeked out of the cloudy darkness. With the roof on the tower we’d be protected from rain but not lightning so we kept an eye on the weather. On the third story we set up a windbreaker with our backpacks and food bags to block the worst of the chilly breezes blustering through. Tomorrow a big storm was supposed to be coming through and you could feel the dampness on the wind. From our treehouse tower we looked down at the golden eyes of a raccoon lumbering amongst the swamp grasses. Across the marsh we heard the lowing of cattle as they called across the river to each other. The light pollution from a nearby city created an amber coloring in the sky and there weren’t many stars with the thick clouds.
On the top of the treehouse we set up our ground tarp, laid our sleeping pads down on it, weighing everything down with heavier items so it wouldn’t blow away. I messed around with a little night photography and we stayed away from as much bird poop as possible as the vultures and other birds really seemed to take a liking to this roost. As we drifted off into sleep tunneling deep in our sleeping bags with the cold wind, we heard a pack of excited coyotes not far off yipping and howling. Come to find out they’re probably eating a cow carcass across the river from us and we went to sleep excited to not have to set up a tent or hang up our food. It was the first shelter we’ve had on the whole trail and were glad to have the experience not having to set up a tent for once!