Florida Trail: Day 35-37
Feb 10 – 12, 2022
Mile: 295.4 to 312.9 (17.5 miles)
Start: Crown Motel, Kissimmee, FL via Kissimmee Lakefront Park
Finish: Holiday Inn, Davenport, FL via Circle K at Hwy 27 near Orlando
We left our junky hotel as early as possible catching an Uber back to Kissimmee Lakefront Park where we continued on our Florida Trail thru-hike, having chosen to take the road less traveled aka the western loop around Orlando. We’re starting to realize there’s a good reason that most hikers go east. Today again was more roadwalking but luckily most of the time there were sidewalks leading through an exciting array of housing developments, crappy gas stations and road construction. It wasn’t very exciting as we continued on the 70 mile stretch of road walking we have to do.
Coming out of the town of Kissimmee, the hiking was beautiful for about a total of 5 minutes till we hit the road walk of insanity. At first it wasn’t bad, jumping next to train tracks where the Amtrak train ran on one side and the low flying airplanes landing at the nearby airport were on the other. There was no shoulder and nowhere for us to walk so we did have to trespass a little in order to not die, walking next to the train tracks which I guess is technically a misdemeanor. I feel like the Florida Trail has us trespassing at least once every week or two.
This morning it was the choice to either walk next to the train tracks and trespass or get hit by cars walking on a tiny strip of grass next to the busy road. Passing drivers wore confused expressions as they looked at us and we guessed they were muttering to themselves, “Why the heck is there someone walking on this road – this is where you dump the dead bodies and the trash.” Yep, there was lots of trash everywhere and you had to be extra careful to not step on broken glass bottles or kick rusty metal pieces up against your leg and always be on the lookout for needles. Next to the train tracks there are signs posted for a 211 phone number which is the emergency hotline if you’re feeling depressed and you want to kill yourself by jumping in front of a train. I guess that has happened on these specific train tracks enough that they posted signs. Yikes.
Just like the somber signs posted next to the Amtrak tracks about being depressed, the trail also had a very depressing outlook on hiker survival today to the point of where we were nervous that we weren’t gonna make it out of this section alive. It was pretty harrowing with traffic going both ways and nowhere for us to walk except in the ditch filled with trash. Even from the ditch you could just simply reach your hand out and touch the 18 wheeler truck going past you. Yep it was pretty freaky and the worst piece of “trail” that I’ve ever hiked down in my career of 6,000+ miles of hiking. It was absolutely awful walking and I wish nothing but terrible things onto whoever picked this section to even remotely think a person could safely walk on it. Cars were so close to us that we could touch them and they were speeding so the likelihood of getting hit was very real.
There was no road shoulder to walk on or even grass but here it just dropped into a ditch filled with murky water where you couldn’t tell if there were alligators in it or not. So to not get eaten by alligators you had to trespass on someone’s front yard as their dogs went crazy barking and maybe chased you. Then you would go back to the other side of the ditch and be forced to wait because a big palm tree was blocking your view of the road and a Gatorade truck was coming straight at you with zero room to move over because cars are you coming the other way and the Amtrak was going back-and-forth kicking up rocks from the tracks. I mean it was just complete chaos.
We were on such an adrenaline high trying to survive this section of Florida Trail that at one point Shannon’s brain went haywire and started picking up random trash on the side of the road. Turns out he found a discarded knife and I told him to put that down because it was probably a murder weapon. Halfway through the 6 mile section of hell we veered off the main drag, passing Home Depot to reach the Wawa gas station where they were playing whiny upbeat pop songs on volume 11. It was so loud both outside and inside the store but it was worth being off the road for a little bit and of course Wawa is the one of the best gas stations in the US because they make sandwiches and salads and rice bowls and it’s pretty cheap. We each ordered rice and quinoa bowls with lots of veggies and protein, resting outside in the sun at a picnic table eating that and some fresh mango chunks. The place was busy with lots of outdoor seating and I didn’t really care much for the looks that the guys fresh off their lunch break were giving me but we sat in the back corner, plugged in our electronics and just kept to ourselves.
After the gas station lunch we went back to the road walking, passing by a Gatorade plant and then onto more crappy “trail” where the traffic was marginally less but not by much. We did research during lunch to see if it was a problem to hike next to the train tracks. Turns out it’s actually a criminal act to walk next to train tracks because they are considered private property and in Florida if you get picked up by the law walking next to the tracks it’s a misdemeanor. Well we decided to risk it anyway again and hiked next to the train tracks instead of next to certain death because at this point a misdemeanor was preferable to getting hit by a car and dying. There used to be a bus that would take you around this section of trail but it no longer runs so options are limited.
The train tracks soon became too swampy so we had to head back to the road and counted down the minutes which I estimated we had less than 40 to be done with this section. From the crazy road walking we had to choose between walking on the side of a six lane highway (?!) or trespass again around tall metal fences on a closed section of an overgrown old highway. Comments in the navigation app said that the bridges on the old highway were sound enough to use because the other option was crossing the busy Florida highway with six rows of traffic or something crazy like that and we decided we had enough close encounters with traffic today. We looked from the tall metal fence with several “No trespassing” signs posted and to the people in traffic next to us. We looked around and didn’t see any cop cars so we decided the lesser of two evils was that we’d rather get caught for trespassing again then get hit on the highway by a freaking semi truck.
It looked like many people had either driven over the metal gate with trucks or climbed over it so it was fairly easy to trespass. Once we were off the main drag and onto the hot old highway it was actually super peaceful and surprisingly beautiful and wild. We scared up a whole mess of alligators, walking up to the side of the bridge where down below a protective mama gator and her seven very large babies were sunning themselves on a muddy bank and then exploded into the water when they heard our voices. People had certainly dumped their trash back here and there were couches, all sorts of appliances and bags of trash everywhere. We just kind of stepped around the trash and sincerely enjoyed not being run over. As we were walking we spotted the dark brown arched humps of two river otters running across the old highway from one pond to another which was amazing to see as nature returned to the old highway which was a lot wilder than we’d thought.
Down in one of the cypress strands beneath the bridges were tons of alligators including one of the fattest alligators we’ve ever seen with its stomach swollen almost to the size of the stomach of a former president who is orange. It was crazy because even tossing a rock nearby and talking (which usually scares the crap out of gators) this one did not even budge and just stared at us. I don’t know what it must’ve eaten recently to be that large – maybe a deer or a drunk ATV driver who came down here at the wrong time. The gator was a massive dinosaur-like creature that didn’t want anything to do with us. We got a little scared at how he just stared at us unmoving with his liquid reptilian eyes and got the heck out of there.
The trail cut onto a highway offramp where we darted across busy traffic to follow along the now defunct Old Polk Cypress Highway. The original red brick surface peeked out from underneath the black tar but the old Cypress boards lining the road are long gone. Supposedly this was a section of trail where people lived to get away from it all and was supposed to be rife with aggressive dogs so we armed ourselves with pepper spray just in case. Luckily we only saw one dog that wasn’t in a cage or fenced in yard. It started to bark and run towards us aggressively before we saw its owner standing on the porch. We waved to the owner and she waved back and I think if the owner didn’t like how we looked she probably would’ve sicked it on us. We were thankful she didn’t as we’d heard horror stories from friends cycling and hiking in backwoods USA where rednecks purposely send their dogs to attack you. Heck, we’d had some spun-out meth head in Kentucky sick his Rottweiler on us while hiking the Sheltowee Trace that road walked in front of his house.
We passed by a stone marker commemorating an old town that no longer exists on any maps called Ponciana. Clearly no one did spell check before the stonemason carved the stone and they had accidentally misspelled the word “citrus” on the side of the statue. It was ironic and funny to see the word misspelled for over 90 years. Oh well! After this we were spread out into more neighborhoods where there was an actual sidewalk (yay!) and talked to an older gentleman with a walker who asked about how much we walk on the Florida Trail. He was very kind and told us he had a stroke about a few months ago and the doctors told him that he would never walk again. The old man told them “Yeah right!” and since then he goes out every morning with his walker to get his muscles stronger. At this point he is up to walking an entire mile and as he is getting up there with mileage and can’t wait to show all the doctors, nurses and his family that he is very much still alive and kicking. We told him that we believed in him and that we’d probably see him up on the Florida Trail sometime soon which made him laugh.
The excitement for the afternoon was walking past a construction site where guys getting off work jumping in their trucks yelling about having sexual intercourse with a gentleman named Brandon. “Let’s go Brandon!” and “F*ck Biden” flags flew on full display from the doublewides nearby. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that these flags have replaced the confederate flags that you’d see everywhere in the backcountry in the Deep South. We figured that with us looking like two homeless people that these locals wouldn’t take too kindly to us. So we got the heck out of here as quickly as possible since this is not the kind of place you want to be walking around with people displaying that stuff for their kids to see. Who knows if they’d shoot at us or not. We’d already been nearly shot already on the Florida Trail so we didn’t want to push our luck.
Not going to lie, the rest of the hike today was boring as hell and we walked on through neighborhoods, dodging cars zooming in and out of housing developments and school buses with kids disembarking from school. We stopped at a couple gas stations to use their bathrooms instead of peeing in the bushes behind someone’s house. The gas stations also provided cold drinks and snacks so we would take turns going inside to pick up food before sitting with our backpacks under the “No Loitering” signs to eat our snacks. Even though we were sitting under the anti loitering signs, many people came by and didn’t say anything, including the sheriff who pulled up to get gas. I guess he’s got bigger fish to fry than prosecuting two Florida Trail bums.
These road walking sections through towns make you empathize on a deep level with homeless people or those struggling to find housing. Everywhere we went we were treated kind of subpar with people eyeing us suspiciously. You’d get followed around convenience stores by employees to make sure you didn’t shoplift. Drivers (especially it seemed to be ones in old or jacked up trucks) would drive as close as possible to you on the road just pulling away at the last second from running over you and committing manslaughter. Parents watched with hawk eyes to make sure the weird backpackers don’t go near their kids which we totally understand the whole “stranger danger.” All conversations stopped at the restaurants we walked into with our backpacks, the clientele eyeing us with malice and suspicion to the point where you could hear a needle drop on the floor because it went so silent. The Florida Trail really isn’t well known so people just assume we’re homeless. We’re starting to feel like the most dangerous parts of this hike aren’t the million acre swamps or poisonous snakes or alligators – it’s the hundreds of miles of road walks.
Today was a big day because we saw our first set of orange blazes marking the trail in over 40 miles. Not many people realize that the Florida Trail goes right outside their houses or neighborhoods and it’s mainly due to the FT being a much newer trail than something like the Appalachian Trail so it’s very much a patchwork of road walking between public land. Maybe one day some of these private landowners will allow for an easement to go through their property so some of the trail can come off the main road but for now around Orlando we had a glorious 70+ miles of road walking. Yucko.
As the sun started to sink lower in the sky, we passed the highway exit to the Disney World entrance which was apparently only a 10 minute drive away. Neither of us have much desire to go spend a day standing in lines for hours during a global pandemic to go on carnival rides. Plus I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to amusement parks which I dislike immensely and always have hated roller coasters and spinning rides ever since I was a kid. Also the weird characters freak me out a bit. To each their own I guess.
As the sun was starting to set, we charged over the pedestrian bridge above Highway I-75 with bumper-to-bumper traffic exiting Disney World. Across the highway rose the towering dark towers of the Omni Hotel which I’m pretty sure I’d been to for a leadership development program outing for work. For an entire 5 days we had a big work conference with hundreds of other young professionals in the leadership program who had flown in from all over the world (obviously pre-pandemic) to network and take classes but most importantly to effing partayyy! We didn’t get much sleep the entire week because you had to be at your seat at a certain time like 7AM sharp and if you were late, you had to stand up on stage in front of 500 people and do a dance or sing a song and say your name and give the reason why you were late. I remember our program leader for the aerospace division of our company told us that if we were late she would be so disappointed in us. That was almost worse than standing in front of executives and other future leaders. We made sure as a group that we weren’t late and we all looked out for each other, not hesitating to bang on doors to wake still drunk coworkers at 6am. Even after partying hard, our friend Phil decided at midnight one night he was going to go walk back to downtown Orlando to continue partying and ended up waking up at 5 AM next to an alligator-filled pond 3 miles away. We are all freaking out come 6:30am asking each other frantic texts and calls where the hell Phil was. No one had seen him and we were concerned because he can be quite wild which is why we loved him. When Phil rolled in early for the work day, completely put together (if not still slightly tipsy) with us berating him why he was here, he told us a hotel employee found him walking past alligator ponds and drove him back to the hotel telling him that he never would’ve made it on time unless he got a ride. Freaking epic. RIP buddy – hope you are watching your rocket ships from up above.
As I recalled the fond memories from another lifetime ago of fresh college grads being paid to stay in a luxury resort for a whole week, I remembered fondly that some of us got upgraded to executive suites because there were so many of us that they didn’t have enough normal rooms. Of course us young guns were going to blow off steam after 10-12 hours of corporate brainwashing. Maybe after work we’d throw college 2.0 parties, dancing on tables and desks as we threw back shots. Whenever a noise complaint would come, we would just disperse dodging the security guards and going to someone else’s suite to continue until the noise complaint happened again and then rinse and repeat. We were little terrors. Now looking at the $300+/night for a basic room I fondly remember those times but was glad they were over. It was so interesting to be coming back to a place I’d been an entire lifetime ago when I thought I was on my way to rule the corporate world with the rest of my friends. That dream has shown itself maybe to not be worth the stress-induced anxiety, depression and GI issues. Now I was back in Orlando with only a backpack carrying everything needed for survival versus the corporate leaders of the future brainwashed mentality. It was so interesting!
As we crested over the tiny hill with our highway overpass being the first elevation we’ve had all day, we spotted what we’ve been looking for all day – the Circle K gas station. I never thought I would be so excited to see a gas station and we ran to the bathroom, grabbed some drinks, snacks and then caught an Uber to a much cheaper hotel than the Omni where we were going to spend a day or two resting our feet. My feet seem like they are finally starting to heal, especially my toes where the skin has been chafed off from poor fitting on my shoelaces on my sneakers. It’s gross but all of the skin of my smaller toes had blistered, popped and being in a dirty wet environment were starting to get infected no matter how much I cleaned them off at night and bandaged them up the next day. They just needed to rest with reduced mileage and a day or two off at the hotel. Hopefully that heals up and we’ll be back to big miles in no time.
Our Uber driver was pretty crazy not really paying attention to the road and having conversations with someone on his phone in Spanish which is fine if you can talk and drive at the same time. Not only was he talking some shit about us (I’m learning Spanish) but he seemed to be struggling to pay attention to traffic and was very distracted, fiddling with a whole bunch of stuff and pulling illegal moves to drive around traffic in his jeep. It was a relief to get the heck out of his car. Maybe he was coked out, who knows.
At the hotel the check-in girl was awesome and we bonded over a mutual disgust of Valentine’s Day and our mutual love of the day after when all the candies went on sale. Then it was up to the hotel room to shower, rinsing the layers of dirt off which for walking through neighborhoods of McMansions I felt like we were dirtier than some of the days when we hiked through the swamp. Being in a high-trafficked area we were able to order Uber Eats food delivery. It was logistics time as we decided how we were going to get the miles done and also watch the Super Bowl with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Eminem. The Super Bowl would keep us going mentally as we finished up our road walks.