Florida Trail: Day 42
Feb 17, 2022
Mile: 388.8 to 408.1 (+2.4mi for 21.7 total miles)
Start: Croom Loop A Camping Zone, Withlacoochee State Forest
Finish: Mutual Mine Campground, Withlacoochee State Forest
The moon didn’t set until early in the morning so we had a bright shiny spotlight in our faces all night even under the shadows of the live oak tree. With the moon full it meant a lot of critters were out and about and we heard a bunch of deer walking around in the fields behind our tent during the night. In the dim light of early morning we packed up our bags knowing that we were only half a mile from the road and didn’t want early rising hikers coming past our tent site. As the saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Before we were all the way packed up, two ladies in dull drab colored clothing walked by and we waved to them. Not even two minutes later, a gunshot went off close by and Shannon and I both looked pretty confused because we were pretty sure that deer hunting season didn’t extend this far north and we’d already gotten rid of our blaze orange clothing. We looked at each other, our eyebrows raised in concern and decided to pack our bags as fast as we could to GTFO. We figured either 1) someone was illegally hunting deer 2) maybe we didn’t know that the Florida hunting regulations allowed you to shoot within 1/4 mile of the road or 3) maybe one of the ladies we just saw took out the other. All we knew was that we didn’t want to go looking to find out.
We hiked the heck out of there, going as fast as we could and soon the woods abruptly stopped and we were spit out on a driveway on someone’s private property. We were pretty confused and wanted to make sure we didn’t take a wrong turn but nope, this was the trail, and like much of Florida the wilderness has been cut up so many times it’s just little patches between road walks and cities. The trail took us through a residential neighborhood where flapping about were lots of what we were calling “the new Confederate flag” aka “Let’s Go Brandon” and “F*** Biden” flags. These houses seemed to also have lots of no trespassing signs posted and angry barking dogs frothing at the mouth sometimes. Luckily today the dogs were all fenced in so that was good and we didn’t have to use our pepper spray or hiking poles for defense or kick any aggressive dogs.
As we were hiking in this random neighborhood, we saw a lady out walking wearing one of the “All lives matter” shirts with the police blue stripe on the flag which, along with all the flags in the neighborhood, made us stereotype the type of person she was. We were on edge, putting on our best polite and neutral faces. Surprisingly the lady was quite friendly but asked us if we slept in the forest and if we were homeless people. I tried to be a good trail steward and told her that we were hiking the Florida Trail, pointing out the orange blazes in front of her on the telephone poles. When we told her that we hiked all the way from Key West and were heading to Pensacola following these orange blazes, she couldn’t believe it. I think this morning that both the lady and our perceptions of certain stereotypes were broken.
We continued on past a bunch of young kids waiting by a bus stop and we waved politely but then looked forward and hiked quickly because we didn’t want someone to think we were going to kidnap their kids or that we were pedos. I mean, some of the driveways in this neighborhood had signs posted with “This is what happens when you trespass” with a silhouette of a person with a target behind their head and bullet holes in the person’s head. Welcome to the deep south, y’all.
Thankfully the trail left the road and crossed next to someone’s yard on a little strip of public land before heading back into the woods. Two very old and decrepit dogs in the fenced in yard started barking at us from the yard and chasing us behind their fence. The oldest one stopped immediately because he was so ancient that he could barely even walk and the other was quite rotund and asthmatic. The out of shape round dog would bark, run as fast as he could where he would pant for about a minute before squeaking out a breathy bark before run-walking forward to catch up with us. The dog would pant for another minute as he tried to keep up with us and wobble down the fence line. It was kind of sad that some people think it’s cute to make their dogs fat but I think this poor guy could’ve stood to lose a couple pounds so he wouldn’t be so out of shape running.
In the woods we followed the electric pole lines and surprisingly ran into some deer jumping and playing across the sandy path with a couple of turkeys. The animals didn’t see us for a moment since we were probably 300 yards away but they soon spotted us and went their separate ways disappearing into the brush. We ducked into the forest, cutting through a nature preserve where we saw a hawk carrying what looked like a rather chubby squirrel in its talons. At the nature preserve there was a trashcan so we dumped out our trash and when Shannon was putting his in, something moved inside the trashcan and he told me to come over with my camera. It was a little frog! Somehow this tiny guy had been trapped inside the trash can, maybe following all the flies that were buzzing around the trash, and then had been locked in during the night.
Shannon gently guided the frog out and the cute amphibian leapt from the trash bag onto Shannon’s palm of his hand. The frog stared up at Shannon’s sunglasses and looked like he had met the giant frog god foretold in ancient amphibian legends. No matter which way Shannon turned his face the frog just moved his head with him and looked at Shannon’s sunglasses in awe. The frog had big dark round eyes just like Shannon sunglasses so maybe he thought Shannon was the king of frogs who had rescued him and some froggy prophecy had been fulfilled. Then the frog decided to kamikaze off Shannon’s hand to the ground where he bounced and was fine. He jumped on Shannon’s shin, staring up at glasses still. Talk about some serious worshiping of your idols! After a while the little frog left and hung out in the leaves where it was insanely easy to lose him because of how well camouflaged he was. We laughed about it and then headed out the nature park.
We abruptly ended in a road where we trekked uphill (I can’t believe there are hills in Florida!) through some farmland and down into woods again. It’s definitely a patchwork of terrain today and passed by this weird campsite in the woods where technically it’s a group campsite but the camp host lady will let thru-hikers stay if needed. We snuck past her since we had miles to go and didn’t feel much like chatting and were spit out again another road where we walked about ten minutes along a busy road interchange till we arrived at a real country store that had recently reopened after new management. We were so excited for this little surprise store as water in this area was scarce and we could either get it at the cypress swamp we had just passed where there were tons of alligators. The cypress swamp had a bird blind and we had scared up about eight deer after seeing a sign that said “Quiet – don’t scare away the wildlife!” How are we supposed to obey the sign if the wildlife are blocking it? Oh well. There’s a nature center near there but it was only open to the public Friday and Saturday and with it being Thursday going to be probably more trespassing and it wasn’t worth it to get water from there.
So we continued to the Lake Lindsay Mall (aka the country store) where we set our packs down outside and talked to one of the nice ladies who worked there. She said if we came in she would make us some food and we rolled in to see what looks like a mix of 1930s farm equipment and country fixin’s mashed up with modern day chip readers and old school deli. Shannon ordered some sandwiches from the girls at the deli and I got a salad since they don’t have gluten-free bread, they were super nice. A couple of Forest Rangers, working guys and motorcyclists came in to order while we were there and we picked up some electrolyte drinks and chips and boiled peanuts to eat alongside. Looking around the shop was a very interesting museum with all sorts of country get-out. For instance above the bathroom was a taxidermied deer butt. An ancient jar of Uncle Ben’s rice sat next to racoon traps, crawdad seines and old artifacts from back in the day. If you felt so inclined, you could even purchase canned pickled possum with the ingredients claiming that it was actually made of different parts of actual opossum. Disgusting!
We skipped the pickled possum and paid for our meals, sitting outside next to our gear with Shannon somewhat overcome with emotion at our good fortune after not having any expectations that there was going to be freshly prepared food in the next few days. He was still so heartbroken from the café in Ridge Manor being closed that he couldn’t put his faith into anything else. Oh the trail drama!
Outside near us a bunch of rough and tumble motorcyclists complained about how out of shape they were from sitting on a bike for hours while chowing down on food and chain smoking. In between listening to videos about fixing their computers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Taylor Swift videos, the two guys talked about being at some bar the previous night and the girls had a nice body but didn’t really remember. They were very interesting people and I felt like we shouldn’t make eye contact and be on our way. I went inside and asked the ladies if we could use their hose outside to fill up with water which they obliged.
As we were packing up, other groups of motorcycles came in and in New York and Jersey accents started dropping the N-word and talking about girls’ hot bodies. It was about time to go and we didn’t want to stick around these disgusting old jerks. As we headed out I could feel the nasty redneck guys staring at me as we left but we got the hell out of there and proceeded to road walk next to a busy country road for the next 7 miles. The sun cooked us and we couldn’t do much talking because we were hiking in a ditch the entire time but we did get to see some cute ponies and a very curious donkey came waddling over to the fence to check us out and maybe grab treats from us.
Then there wasn’t much exciting anyway about dodging trucks for 7 miles so I popped in an audiobook about the history of the Everglades which was really cool and tried to listen as best we could as traffic noise from blaring motorcycles and trucks drowned out the sound from my headphones. On several telephone poles someone had mounted little birdhouses and inside one we could see a little mousy face peering out to look at us. It took us a minute to realize it wasn’t a weird looking bird – it was actually a flying squirrel! A rare eastern bluebird tried to make its way into the bird box to see if it was empty and flew back in surprise as the flying squirrel chittered at it and ducked back into the bird box. Cute!
To keep us motivated, we peeked in every bird box we could find but didn’t see any more flying squirrels. Thankfully there was enough space on the side of the road that you could walk in the grass without worrying too much about getting hit by cars and trucks. The trail turned onto a street where there was so much roadkill that we wanted to rename it to Roadkill Way. We had to leap over and around so many dead critters baking in the hot sun it was disgusting. There was even a wild hog that must’ve weighed at least 110 pounds with 4-inch-long tusks like daggers sticking out of its wiry fur. Every half mile we were leaping over dead wild hogs and seeing how large they got, we definitely don’t want to have any close encounters with these guys in the woods.
Another 3 miles of following the road with the temperatures soaring made for an extremely hot last stretch of road walking. We turned onto a tiny trail in the middle of a long stretch of woods where we didn’t get much relief from the sunshine under open slash pine with little shade or breeze. We were hiking through the hottest part of the afternoon and felt like our sweat was just dripping off of us instead of evaporating because of how humid it was. It was sticky, dusty and we didn’t want to stop since we still had about 10 miles to go until our campsite tonight but a rest in the shade during the hottest part of the day probably would do us good. We were rationing our water since we had a bunch of miles to go in this waterless section of trail that was a bit like the desert. The pine forests and rolling sand hills meant that surface water was locked up far below our feet in the caves and limestone rocks. With 10 miles to go, we had to ration our water carefully and we decided that with the heat beating down on us and my dehydration headache from last night not going away that it was time to pause, reset and maybe think of a Plan B.
We found a shade tree where we set up our tarp underneath it and stretched out, drinking a liter of electrolyte drink powder mixed with caffeine drink mix (a.k.a. The Hiker Trash Special). The Hiker Trash Special is usually chased with a couple of ibuprofen to make it especially effective but today we just needed the liquid. With only a couple hours of daylight left and both of us feeling pretty beat from the hot road walks and Shannon starting to get a little loopy, we needed to listen to our bodies telling us to slow down and that a 21 mile day instead of 26 miles was probably what we needed. Underneath the shade of a live oak we took an hour break during the hottest part of the day and ate some salty snacks to help get ahead of muscle cramping since we’d sweat so much. We made the decision to only go another 5 miles, taking a side trail to another campground where supposedly they have water, tenting and showers. It would feel so good to rinse off after a long day of sweating.
5 miles of more hiking sounded a lot better than 10 miles and we decided that the shorter day was for the best. After another mile we started hiking through a burned zone unlike any burn zone we had come across so far on the Florida Trail. Why? Because the burn zone was still on fire.
It looked like the controlled burn had started only a day or two ago and as the logs next to the trail were still smoldering and the trees spurted flames. This was not a good sign. The trees alongside the path were unstable and weak from all the fire and you could hear the branches crackling and the trunks groaning. On either side of the trail, large gray clouds of smoke billowed and the brush like bacon fat sizzling over a fire. Much of the brush had burned as it was so dry out here and everything was charred. It was smokey and a little difficult to breathe deeply. We didn’t really want to linger here as we were a little bit shocked that this fire was still burning. I know that the forest service regularly does controlled burns but there weren’t any signs posted warning about the fire. Oh well, I guess the forest service can’t be everywhere at once and I think not that many people hike the Florida Trail out this way so there’s probably not any reason to hang a sign for a few people coming through.
Everywhere you looked the trees were still smoldering and more often than not on fire. We carefully picked our way along the blackened trail and watched our feet to make sure our shoes didn’t sink into any fiery embers and cook or have the fabric catch on fire. We wondered if the campground we were heading to was even still standing since the wildfire stretched pretty far east. I recalled the words of the forest firefighter who we had met a couple weeks ago who had told us with a confident swagger that if we encountered a forest fire out here to just jump over it.
It looked like we were going to have to use our firefighter friend’s advice today as we had to not only bushwhack through smoking brush but also jump over several fallen trees where the flames were blocking the trail. You just jump over the small flames and hope that you don’t trip up and fall face first on the burning log. Some of the flames were too tall and scary to jump over with 3-foot-tall walls of fire blocking the path so we had to detour around them. Cracking limbs fell off their burnt tree trunks off in the distance which was fine since the action was far away from us. However as we kept hiking, a huge creaking and then bursting sound exploded from the woods nearby and we saw that we were only a stone’s throw away from a blackened 12-inch-thick tree that had collapsed in half from its weakened trunk and burst into flame. Instinctively we jumped back as fire shot out of the interior of the tree and branches exploded. Our faces paled and we looked at each other slightly horrified as we realized this was like no other burn zone we’d been in before.
Soon we reached the point on our GPS app where we were to take a side trail to the campground. When we made it difficult to navigate was that the side trail had been burnt to a crisp, the blue blazes painted on the trees to mark the way were now crisped and charred to the point where you couldn’t recognize them. The trail turned randomly into the woods but we couldn’t see any blue blazes marking where the trail led because everything had burned. If we didn’t go down this side trail, we would run out of water on the next 6 miles to the upcoming water source and might find ourselves hiking in the dark through an actively burning forest which weren’t pleasant or particularly safe options. All we could do was try our best using our GPS track to bushwhack into the burning forest in order to make it 1.7 miles to this campground where hopefully we’d find water and sanctuary from the flames.
If the fire got really bad I guess we could try another way around to the campground but we trekked off the beaten path and onto the charred remains of the trail. Not going to lie it was kind of scary as we hiked through the heart of the burn which was crazy as chunks of flaming wood fell off the trees and we had to avoid stepping on the real white ash that hid burning embers underneath. Probably the scariest moment I had was while we were cutting through 8-foot-tall brush to head back towards what the GPS said was the trail before it burned. I had lost Shannon at this point and as I pushed my way through the bushes to try to find him, all I could hear was a loud crackling as a strong piney turpentine smell emanated in the air enveloping me. Underfoot I picked my way over smouldering embers trying not to linger too long on the hot ground to avoid melting my shoes. I turned into where I saw an opening in the brush and all of a sudden found myself surrounded on three sides by a burning wall of dried brush with huge plumes of gray smoke wending me in. The brush was sizzling, smoking and popping which was probably the scariest sound I had heard on the Florida Trail so far. The dry brush around me erupted into flames and I pushed through the few green bushes blindly, looking towards the sky to navigate around the actively burning patches of greenery. It was a pretty hairy situation as I couldn’t see through the brush that was taller than our heads so I had to look up where the thick gray smoke clouds were, listen to the loud crackling of bushes on fire and go the opposite way.
I danced over the logs that were white hot with glowing embers underneath and adrenaline from trying to survive coursed through my veins. It was very post-apocalyptic all around us and my shirt was soaked through, sweating not only from the intensity of the fire but from knowing one wrong step could mean being burned irreversibly. You had to carefully watch our surroundings, continuously monitoring the flames around and below us as well as making sure that the weakened dried out husks of trees didn’t fall on us. It was pretty crazy.
I lost Shannon for a little bit as my voice was swallowed up by the roar of the burning bushes. Out in the open free from flaming brush, I finally heard Shannon calling for me and we were rejoined not far from the GPS track of what used to be a trail. As we were deep into the fire, we regrouped and reading someone’s comments on the trail we found out that the GPS track we were following was completely wrong as the side trail has been apparently moved a little bit north but yet not updated on the navigation app. We had paper maps with us as well but I didn’t think to pull them out as the campground wasn’t that far away and if things had gotten really bad I would have.
After about 30 minutes of bushwhacking through the flaming husks of what was once a pine forest, dodging crackling underbrush that caught alight instantly and pulling on our neck gaiters to block out the smoke we finally arrived at the rerouted trail. We made our way through that smouldering trail occasionally still needing to jump over flaming logs that had blocked the trail. Our pace picked up as all around us we heard the trees surrounding the pathway snap and saw a couple burnt logs crash and splinter on the ground in a fiery mess. We didn’t wanna end up like that poor kid on the PCT who about 5 years ago was killed by a falling tree that had been weakened by forest fire. It seemed a very real possibility especially since in a short amount of time we’ve already seen several trees that were on fire snap, crack and fall.
Dirty, dusty and skin blackened with charcoal head-to-toe we hiked as fast as we could and finally got behind the actively burning zone with a forest road acting as a fire break. We both were covered with black marks all up and down our legs from brushing against burned logs and charred brush and I’m pretty sure my leg hair had burned at some point from getting too close to a fiery log. It was nice and calm on the way to the campground which we had reserved with Shannon‘s military discount spending a whopping $6 to not be camping somewhere next to an active fire.
We checked in with the campground host Kurt and he told us they had started the fire only a day or so ago. Unfortunately the showers were being renovated so there were no showers as was advertised but Kurt said we could feel free to use the bathroom sinks to shower as he eyed our gnarly charcoal streaked arms, legs and faces. There was also a water faucet at our site so we could shower there and he said if we were brave enough to feel free to swim in the old mining pond where I was certain that there were lots of alligators. We thanked Kurt, headed to our campsite which was one of three that was occupied at the campground today. The campground north of us was completely occupied and we had been originally planning on collecting water, showering and then camping on a side trail to avoid the whole booked up place. This campground was a little bit easier to stay since we had a reservation and we could make do with our sponges for showering. We used a sponge to wash the grit and black soot off of us which was so thick today that it looked like we had been wearing tights. The idea of having a sponge or piece of sponge with us to take impromptu hiker trash baths was a lifesaver – thank you very much Mosey and Aria from the PCT for the idea!
It was a wonderful feeling of scrubbing the sweat, the bug spray, the sooty coal and the craziness of the day. You never know what the Florida Trail is going to throw at you. I went down to the pond where an old phosphorus mine had been and found out the surrounding counties provided at one point 80% of the phosphorus for the United States and 25% of the world’s supply. Pretty crazy! The camp host had told us to feel free to go swimming in the pond but heck no – it’s Florida and I’m not swimming in gator infested lakes especially around sunset (or probably ever).
We cleaned up as best we could, cooking entire family sized meals for each of us for dinner, hung our food bags and then went right to sleep. For once we didn’t hear any animal sounds tonight – just the sound of the highway nearby and the bright light from the bathrooms and the full moon shining in our eyes. Tomorrow we would get to the town of Inverness and take a few days to hang out with my Nana’s friend Pat and Kathie and sightsee a little bit around Florida before we are too far north.