Florida Trail: Day 33
Feb 8, 2022
Mile: 256.1 to 277.5 (+.7mi side trail for 22.1 total miles)
Start: Cowboy camping 3 stories high at Lake Jackson Tower
Finish: Budget Inn, St. Cloud, FL via Doc Partin Ranch Rd & Canoe Creek Rd
This morning we woke as the sun was rising beautifully in the east, the pink and orange glow of the giant ball lingering for a bit before fizzling out into the gray blue of the storm clouds smothering the horizon. Around 3am I woke up with a very interesting thought running through my head, convinced that a pack of raccoons was coming up the three stories of the treehouse to steal our food. Every rustle of the trees and marsh grass confirmed my worst fears or so I thought and I went on sentry patrol, my headlamp searching down below for glowing yellow eyes of the raccoons. I think I was just having weird vivid dreams and there were no raccoons to be had. It took a while to fall back asleep, reading my book about a girl growing up in the 10,000 islands of the Everglades National Park that finally lulled me back asleep.
We woke later than we’d wanted to since the wildlife management area we were in seemed to be somewhat busy with backwoods hunters and fishermen. Truly we didn’t want to get caught sleeping in the treehouse by someone on a four wheeler or truck so it was time to hurry up and get going. As we were packing up, I saw headlights on a not too distant forest road and couldn’t remember if the lights had been there the previous night. When the lights moved we realized it was someone in a truck or four wheeler coming down the road and likely headed towards the treehouse. We scrambled to throw our gear in our backpacks to make it look like we just stopped by to have breakfast here instead of having spent the night. We took the stealth camping stuff seriously this morning and headed back to the Florida trail .7 miles down the blue blazed side trail.
Once back on the Florida Trail we saw another hiker in the gray morning light standing underneath the Live Oak trees and swaying Spanish moss. It was our friend Pine Stick! He said he wakes up very early most days and had already done 4.5 miles by the time we finished barely half a mile. Today we would be reaching the second loop decision point on the Florida Trail whether to head east or west around Orlando. We chatted and made plans to meet up after the Orlando loop section as he was going east and we were going west.
We said goodbye wishing eccentric and passionate Pine Stick good luck and then made good timing through the Three Lakes WMA where we followed some very interesting blazing that one commenter in the FarOut navigation app said “…was like they blazed this trail while on acid.“ We had to agree slightly as the trail wound tightly through hills and dales of cow pasture, up and down dried up creek beds and darting in and out the maze of cabbage palms and oak hammocks. We traversed an extremely rickety bridge over a deep canal outlet with black and green water that definitely had more than a few hidden alligators in it. There are a couple large mummified dead fish on the shore that looked like carp and catfish with their hollowed husks of their bodies armored with thick scales. For some reason I got bored and kicked the dead fish around the trail. Shannon had to tell me to stop playing soccer with the dead fish and to keep hiking. We ran into a couple guys out fishing who said that they were having decent luck above the canal and then we headed back into the forest.
A fire tower rose in the distance with an enormous lightning rod sticking high into the sky. I told Shannon that the lightning rod was a fishing rod looking to cast out for the biggest catfish that it could find. He said I needed to get my mind off of the dead catfish we saw a few miles back and shake out the loose screws. Ha! The prairie opened up into fields of longleaf pine where some of their trunks were encircled with painted white bands which we found out that it meant it was a nesting site of the endangered cockaded woodpecker which is pretty cool. We didn’t see any rare woodpeckers this morning but that was okay. They kind of look like they have a red bullet hole in their heads but need a very specific type of forest that is growing increasingly rare in the southeastern US.
Somehow we made good timing through the marshes and longleaf pine forest where the trees were so evenly spaced apart that you could see for about a mile through the trees. Spikes of head high palmettos blocked from view any critters but the marsh bridges certainly had lots of animal scat dotted along the planking which we had to dodge. We were excited to get the miles done especially since it was supposed to rain a bit this afternoon and we’re learning that when they forecast any amount of rain in Florida that you should expect exponentially more. Today it was only supposed to be 0.3 inches of rain but we knew we’d probably run into at least a couple inches based on rainy weather experiences further south. We wanted to grab some quick food before we got too far along the wonderful 20 mile road walk coming up where we wouldn’t have much of a chance to relax while dodging farm trucks, zipping cars and 18 wheelers shoving us to the side on the busy country road.
About 6 miles later we came to our second trail division where Florida Trail hikers must choose which direction to circumvent Orlando and Disney World. 80% of hikers trek east around Orlando which as the western route is not only 38 miles longer but also has quite a bit more road walking. We were headed west since we were going to go visit my Nana‘s friend Pat in The Villages and also wanted to rent a car for a couple days to go to swim with the manatees in Crystal River and potentially see Carol Baskins Big Cat Rescue in Tampa. As we hit the split, the trail looked very nice up ahead of us as it wound east through the forest, leading another 80 miles east toward the town of Christmas and Titusville aka the Space Coast where Kennedy Space Center and many of the NASA, ULA and SpaceX launches took place. The trail to the west didn’t look as nearly as inviting down a long desolate road knowing we would walk the majority of it in the rain for 20 miles without sidewalks followed by another 55 miles of neighborhood and city walking. Talk about an exhilarating next few days – sheesh! It was all we could do to mentally steel ourselves for the next few shitty days of roadwalking.
2 miles into the 20 mile highway walk we hit the north end of the Three Lakes WMA where you could camp for cheap during hunting season. On the south end of the WMA it was a ghost town with empty trailers parked everywhere and not a single soul to be seen. Here it was a different story with about two dozen RVs, trailers and campers parked around the site where for $28 you could park and make this your homebase for three months. You could tell there were a lot of resident campers here and it had a weird trailer park meets Wild West vibe that made us none too comfortable. We only stopped here at the weird campground because there wasn’t going to be anywhere else to stop since it was all private land and cattle ranches for the next 18 or so miles and we wanted to have a quick lunch. There were two water pumps but the first one was broken with signs posted, “Do not drink” with a brown algae filled water jug next to it and a lovely trash bag toilet. Double gross. Shannon went to go see if the water pump near the bathrooms worked but we didn’t know how to prime it. On the way back to our lunch spot Shannon ended up meeting Ed, a retired mechanical engineer tinkering with making a silencer for his RV’s generator. He kindly gave Shannon 4 L of water that he’d procured from the gas station and we filtered that since it was in our dirty water bag and didn’t know what bacteria or parasites were still left clinging to that. I had cooked up a Backcountry Pantry dehydrated meal of Cuban rice, beans and bananas which was turning out to be one of our favorite fancy hiker meals.
As we sat in the grass amongst the RVs, many kind and curious people came by on the pretext of walking their dogs and chatted with us about the Florida Trail. I went to use the bathroom since it was going to be a long road walk ahead of us with few places to duck into the woods to pee. A kind of redneck guy in a jacked up, blacked out truck with four huge American flags fluttering from the top pulled into the dirt patch. Next to his truck was his RV that was covered in even more flags posted boldly and brashly, one of which said “F*ck Biden” not even the less subtle “Let’s go Brandon” flag. It was just flat out the F word displayed in all of its redneck trash glory. A guy with a border collie came up and talked to Ed, Shannon and I about how he’s been a Republican for 40 years and couldn’t get behind the whole Brandon and F Biden movement and how disrespectful it was. He seemed pretty agitated which made his dog agitated and kept barking nonstop. The guy was so riled up that he said stuff about there being a fight later about this. The WMA camp was 30 minutes from civilization by car and there was no campground host or park rangers who came there to enforce any rules. Basically it was a lawless trailer park with zero rules and being far away from civilization things could get dangerous quickly. To me the drama and the escalation seem to be a good sign and we packed up and got the hell out of there. I definitely would not camp here at all with this drama going down. Who knows who’s packing heat and what’s going to happen after dark but it seemed to be heating up to some trashy sh*t real quick and probably escalate into a fight and maybe more. We didn’t wanna be there when that happened and we left. We think we’ve already had our fill of encounters with a Florida Man and we’re hoping to avoid him the rest of the trail.
Ed had talked our ears off about encryption programs and all sorts of stuff he was very proud of and we politely listened while eating our rice and beans and drinking from the water he supplied us until the political drama escalated and we got the hell out of Dodge. We continued down the country road jumping onto the barely mowed grassy ditch where our shoes and ankle gaiters picked up all sorts of hitchhiking burrs and plant material as we trudged through the brush. You had to jump out of the way of traffic since there is literally no road shoulder and it got old pretty quickly as we slid onto the grass that had quickly become slippery and soaked with rain.
A deluge started coming down and it didn’t stop all afternoon, the rain making visibility especially poor as the day got darker and some of the vehicles didn’t turn on their lights. Most of the traffic was enormous 18-wheelers that took up the entire road so you had to jump down into the ditch pretty far to not get smushed. In the overgrown ditches you had to not only watch out for snakes but also broken glass bottles, trash, needles, wires, dead vultures as well as alligators that would hide in the culverts. It was not the most fun day but we put in our audiobooks with the rain pouring down and hiked as fast as we could.
The trail took us past tons of cattle ranches with stout Angus cows and funny looking Brahmas with their skin fold that shook as they walked. The Brahma cattle had beautiful faded hides with dark black heads with soft gray bodies or tan bodies with coppery heads or speckled combinations. The ranches were absolutely enormous and we found out after the first few cattle fields that the cattle were cautious but overly curious. They would see us hiking and not be too sure what we were but their curiosity could not be overcome. As a herd, the group would come traipsing close to the fence line to check us out. Then when they decided they were a little too close they would freak out a little bit and run away in a stampede kicking up dust and dirt. Then their curiosity would be piqued again, especially if we sang to them, and the herd would return before stampeding away again. As trail entertainment goes it was pretty fun and we found that cattle really seemed to like our terrible singing. It made us smile for a little bit which we needed in the long, rainy road walk. It also helped to recall the words that Pine Stick said to us this morning that it’s important to have lows on the trail because they make the highs that much better. I’m so true and we knew today was not gonna be the most exciting day but it’s part of the trail and, just like life, not every day is trail magic like bobcat sightings and eating empanadas.
The rain poured down all afternoon, way more than the 0.3” that was forecasted. When we’d have to go pee we would try to hold it as long as possible until traffic paused momentarily and then we’d find a spot with no houses nearby or farm dogs before ducking into the thick bushes. Then it was back to trudging in the cold rain. It went on like this till about 4:30pm when we started getting very cold because the temperature had dropped into the 50s and the volume of rain continued to ramp up. It was a chilly rain, the cold new to us on the Florida Trail as the deluges of the Florida Keys and Everglades were warm and tropical and welcome. This was freezing and near-hypothermia inducing. We knew we’d have to leave the roadway before dark because even now the cars could barely see us or understand why the hell two random people with backpacks were walking alongside the country highway.
We tried to hike as close as possible to the small town of Saint Cloud where 50,000 people resided near Orlando and Disney World. Our cell service was extremely spotty throughout the late afternoon and finally we got enough bars at one point crossing over a highway to open the Uber and Lyft apps. The only problem was we were pretty far out of town and drivers would cancel our rides or they would refuse to accept them. At one point we waited next to a side road under the shaded cover of a densely branches live oak tree to keep sort of dry. We naively thought we’d wait for an Uber to come but it never did and we started showing the first signs of hypothermia which is the loss of fine motor skills. It was getting very challenging to zip up our rain jackets or press buttons on our phones which were also soaking wet. Even with rain jackets on, all of our clothes we were wearing were drenched through. We were afraid that at some point we’d accidentally closed the request for a ride so Shannon kept wiping his phone down with a big chunk of toilet paper until the TP became too deteriorated to do much of anything.
Instead of standing in one place and shivering ourselves into full-blown hypothermia, we decided it was time to throw on our rain pants. Mine have a huge hole down the butt crack that was taped up with multi colored star and galaxy duct tape so now it looks like I have a black hole coming out of my butt. It’s super hiker trash. The rain pants provided a little bit of warmth and we chugged on, getting some more miles until finally our savior Andy J from the Lyft app accepted our ride request. We hiked onto a driveway and had signs posted saying, “Keep Out” and stood under the spotty cover of a live oak tree outside their fence line that didn’t actually provide much cover at all and shivered in the rain waiting for our main man Andy J to pick us up. Needless to say it took an hour to get the Uber ride from when we first called it so we were glad that we hiked on and persisted with the rideshare apps. Otherwise with darkness being around 6:15pm, we would be out on this crazy busy road with nowhere to really camp and nowhere to go that wasn’t private property. Also our chances of catching an Uber in the dark in the middle of the country would probably make most drivers think that they were about to be robbed or killed by some whack job serial killer. At least that’s what I would think!
Of course our rideshare driver Andy was confused about the ride request but turned out to be extremely nice. He’d come from Puerto Rico 4 years ago to the US and told us about how amazing their national parks were. He brought us a 20 minute drive into Saint Cloud to our hotel where the hotel owner at the desk, Sherri, was so incredibly welcoming that we were just thrilled to stay with her. She said make sure we get a good night’s rest and that in the morning check out isn’t until 11am but we could stay till 1pm if we wanted to.
Sherri ran a tight ship at the hotel and we were happy to have stayed there as the place was super modern with all the amenities you could ask for in a budget hotel. We’re starting to hike into the area where there are a lot of budget hotels filled with long term residents and sketchy people so we have to be a little pickier about where we stay and this had a lot of good reviews. As we were checking in, Sherri received a call from someone who brazenly asked if they could stay at her hotel and smoke crack. No I’m not joking – they literally asked the hotel owner if they could smoke crack at her hotel. Impressively she calmed herself and handled the request politely but firmly making sure the person knew that this was a non-smoking hotel and to please look somewhere else to do that. Must not be that uncommon of a request because there’s so many cheap hotels around here I’m sure many are filled with drugs and prostitution and sex trafficking. She stuck us in a nice room and the first thing we did was jump in the hot shower, turning the temperature all the way up as far as the heat would go to stop shivering. The hot water felt heavenly and it took a while for the warmth to soak into our bones.
We ordered pizza delivery and it was just okay but they did have gluten-free options which was awesome. For veggies we shared a big Greek salad and then a Mediterranean gluten-free pizza that came with an undercooked crust for me and Shannon ordered a supreme pizza but got something that wasn’t quite a supreme pizza and no ranch dressing. At this point we were starving and could’ve eaten out of a trash can and been just fine. While we were waiting for the pizza, we ran across the street to the convenience store and grabbed some snacks and drinks to tide us over for the night. I was exhausted and so was Shannon so sleep came very quickly to us which was nice.
Tomorrow we decide to start a few days of lower mileage with my feet being pretty messed up from all the rain and sand and not having washed socks in the past week in a laundry machine. The road walking has been pretty rough on my feet and so has the fine grit from the swamps and the sand rubbing against my toes. Almost all of the outer skin layers on my toes on both feet have blistered and are open wounds, slowly on their way to getting seriously infected. Today I had made the mistake of wrapping some of my toes directly with Leukotape which is a very robust athletic tape that’s almost like a duct tape. As I peeled the tape off, I also peeled so many layers of skin off that my toes underneath started bleeding. The rest of my toes are in various stages of dead skin falling off, popped blisters and open wounds. I bandaged up all the open wounds, applying a healthy amount of antibiotic cream on top of them and then securing them with Band-Aids. Hopefully this will help and we’re going to do some lower mileage in the next few days so that should allow my feet to have a little break to heal.
The road traffic outside rushed loudly outside our hotel but it didn’t matter as immediately after dinner we both passed out with our phones in hands. We were trying to finish catching up on plans for the next week, work and blogging but I think our bodies were telling us we needed rest, especially after walking in near-hypothermic conditions all day in the rain.
