Florida Trail: Day 39
Feb 14, 2022
Mile: 329.8 to 344.9 (15.1 miles)
Start: Holiday Inn, Davenport, FL via Circle K at Hwy 27 near Orlando
Finish: Hampton Inn, Dade City, FL via CR471
This morning was Valentine’s Day and since we both dislike Valentine’s Day, we did not give a crap about what we did today. Our post-Super Bowl hangovers were cured by rolling out of bed, grabbing complementary breakfast downstairs and heading back up to the room with a little plate of eggs, sausages and oranges and turning on the Roku that we bring with us to catch up on the latest episode of the hilarious mega church satire The Righteous Gemstones. Then after that it was time to pack up, head out to the trail and get 16 miles done.
We had dropped our mileage in the last week as my toes were starting to get infected badly. The lower miles have really helped the feet heal up. At one point I had blisters on every single toe with blisters under those blisters and the skin had rubbed raw from all the dirt, sweat and poorly laced shoes. Washing my feet at a campground and letting my toes dry out cleaned out the grit and dust but the under layers of skin were redder than the skin of Darth Maul combined with a burn patient. When I’d let the toes air out, a fly immediately buzzed over and started feasting on my exposed skin looking to lay eggs in the rotting flesh. And that’s when we knew we had to take a few days off and lower our mileage a little bit so we could let my feet heal up.
We packed up and called for an Uber where Diane, a local lady who was super sweet, drove us out into the countryside asking us all sorts of questions about our trip and about where exactly she was taking us. Sometimes I feel like when you’re getting dropped off of these really remote sections of trail that it’s best to put your driver at ease because it is kind of weird you’re asking to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We enjoyed talking to Diane and making her laugh which was super great. Then it was right back to the road walking for a couple miles with our super sexy brand new blaze orange headbands and XL tshirt cloth dangling from our backpacks. We were about to enter the Green Swamp WMA where deer hunting with guns seasons is still going on for another week. Luckily this past weekend when they were having a big hunt managed by some wildlife people that we just stayed out of there. When we rode walking back to US 27 Orlando we saw a bunch of cop cars and a big ambulance with lights on zooming towards the WMA and hopefully it wasn’t a hunting accident or anything but we didn’t know.
The road work took us by cattle pastures and then crossed into a parking lot with a gate where we cut into the woods and back onto the Florida Trail. It was nice to be off the road finally and looking back we had just walked 70 miles on the road or next to the road. It’s so funny that Florida Trail is definitely a patchwork of southern America with residential mansions we passed next to the waterfront and also going through housing development and down winding backcountry roads. It’s nice to finally be back in the woods and we made good time on the trail.
We were both excited about our super cool DIY orange outfits with our headbands that made us look like a cross between Che Guevara, Rambo and Jamie Kennedy from that terrible movie Malibu’s Most Wanted where tries to be a gangster. At least we wouldn’t get shot with our head to toe orange!
I know this sounds ungrateful or whatnot but the day was pretty uneventful and we were all about getting the miles done. We passed by lots of empty deer stands and didn’t see too many critters because of the big hunt that had happened recently. I think the forest was recovering and we barely even heard birds today. The trail was a lot of pine forests mixed in with prairies and cypress strands.
At one point we had spotted an orange on the ground in the middle of the forest. It wasn’t our first rodeo and we now know that citrus fruit in the dirt isn’t just someone dropping their food like we had seen in the Sierra Nevadas on the Pacific Crest Trail but it meant that there was a wild citrus grove nearby. We looked up in the trees and sure enough spotted the wild citrus garden right above our heads. Shannon shook one of the trees and a ripe orange fell down but we didn’t have too many expectations since we knew that despite looking perfectly juicy and sweet the citrus fruit can actually be pretty sour. Shannon’s mama says that they’re ornamental oranges and that they’re definitely not the sweet variety. They find a lot of the same type of oranges when they vacation in Arizona so I think they know what they’re talking about.
The fridge in our hotel had been working pretty crazily no matter which way you turn the dial it just froze everything. I had walked out of the hotel this morning with a sack of frozen pickles and every time we tried to eat them they were still frozen to the point where it’s like you’re eating a pickle slushy that gave you brain freeze. Pickle slushies and oranges – yum yum!
We hiked about 11 or 12 miles and were planning to stop at the Mott Hammock campsite for a quick snack break. The area has been burned recently by a controlled fire where the forest firefighters burn out the invasive grasses and brush which allows native plants to grow back and clears territory for animals like turkeys and deer. It’s pretty jaw dropping walking through charred trees and blackened pine cones and curled up toasted palmettos. From our hiking app we found out that the blaze had happened only about a week and a half ago so you could still smell fire and occasionally spot a lone stump burning.
I went into the campsite excited to sit down and have a quick snack break and saw that someone was already camping there with their hammock and stuff hanging from the trees. We met “Denmark” who is biking across the US with his panniers, his backpack and a plane ticket back to Denmark in six months from Los Angeles. He was pretty cool and we chatted about the Faroe Islands where he had been stationed for military duty and where Shannon and I had to run a race with our friends Ashley and Austin pre-Covid. It was really cool because the Faroe Islands are very remote located south of Iceland and technically part of Denmark so their currency is the Danish Kroner. We asked Denmark all these different questions and really wanted to stay and hang with him but unfortunately we couldn’t linger long as there was a local Trail Angel who was going to pick us up to bring us to a hotel for Valentine’s Day.
We said goodbye sadly to Denmark and wished him all the best on his biking trip. We really wanted to keep talking to him but it was all good. As we snacked we laughed with him and listened to some of the crazy stories he told us about his trip so far. When he pulled up to the WMA he didn’t really know what it was going to be like but it was a full-blown hunt the day he showed up. When he pulled up on his bike and told the camp host, “I have a reservation,” instead of the campground host instead saying something like “Okay what’s the name?” she rudely replied “No you don’t.” Then when showed her his reservation the camp host had no idea where that even was. He laughed at how it was kind of funny that he had to go through all these struggles to get here and his campsite doesn’t even have water nearby. Denmark heard gunshots the whole time he was camped and was biking so we offered him some of our orange clothing but he declined and said his high viz reflective biking jacket should be just fine. It should be and hopefully he has a safe journey out of the WMA on his way to California.
The sun was starting to set but we knew we’d make the next five or so miles pretty easily and sure enough made it to the place where we were meeting up with Trail Angel Canadian Dad to get picked up. It was so nice to see him and he had just finished thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail 3.5 months from Memorial Day to 9/11. He’s a former retired Army Ranger and it was really cool chatting with him and sharing experiences about long distance hikes. He said he was hoping soon that him and his wife could go hike the Appalachian Trail because their kids are approaching high school age and they’re building an extension on their house for their parents to come move down and watch the kids while they’re away. Canadian Dad said he hiked really fast because he wanted to get home to his wife and kids but said he’s super excited for his wife to come hike with him because then they can do all the sightseeing on the Appalachian Trail instead of doing back to back 30 mile days.
At the hotel we thanked Canadian Dad for the ride and tossed him some money for gas. He offered to drive us back tomorrow if it worked out and we said we’d let him know but probably. Then we checked into our hotel chatting with a super friendly guy behind the counter who had just moved to Florida from Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago where there’s 2 feet of snow down and he couldn’t be happier. He was super fun and said he had taken his wife to a very expensive resort over the weekend for Valentine’s Day. He winked at Shannon and said once a year you have to spend the $500 a night to take your wife out. Then he told us about the time he forgot his wife’s birthday until 6 PM and how much trouble he got in. We all laughed at that and then I got worried that I was going to forget Shannon‘s birthday but it’s still a few months away.
We had to restock a couple items like more granola bars, some cooking fuel and a few other objects to get the three days up to the town of Inverness where we were going to rent a car and hang out with my Nana’s BFF Pat. We are so excited to see her and hang out in The Villages which as far as I’ve heard is like a crazy party city for the 55+ crowd. All I know about that retirement community is that everybody has golf carts and everybody just wants to have a good time.
Anyways after our date to Walmart and running across a four-lane highway in the dark which started off our Valentine’s Day night on the right foot, I took Shannon out to a very romantic dinner to one of the area’s top restaurants: Taco Bell. I don’t know why but we didn’t care that it’s Valentine’s Day – we just wanted to eat some nasty Taco Bell.
After four tacos, a burrito, rice and beans and an American sized soda, we swung by the grocery store to pick up some nutritious ice cream, gummy worms and chips to bring back to the hotel. At the hotel we relaxed and being little fatties (because we were both somehow still starving after Taco Bell) we chowed down on snacks and put on the 1990s classic sitcom Hercules: the Legendary Journeys. We were laughing our butts off about how cheesy the show was with the bad CGI, slow-mo fight scenes and how they seemed to only cast the girls with big, um, assets for the show. It was so funny and we had a good time. When it was 8:30 or 9 we passed the heck out and went to bed.
