Florida Trail: Day 50
Feb 24, 2022
Mile: 438.2 to 456.0 (+.2mi for 18 total miles)
Start: Comfort Inn & Suites, Dunnellon, FL via Blue Run Park
Finish: SW 49th Ave Campsite, Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway
This morning we lounged around and caught up on some social media and TV shows in the hotel before heading out around noon from the comfort Inn and Suites in Dunnellon. It was going to be a warm day as far as Florida winters go but luckily we weren’t so far inland that we couldn’t enjoy the breeze from the Gulf Coast that made for very pleasant hiking. We hiked back down the streets of the tiny “boomtown” of Dunnellon which was interesting as most of the places seemed kind of low income interspersed with some tourist attractions. Dunnellon became a bustling mining area when high grade phosphate was discovered in the late 1880s. This chemical is critical for crop fertilizer and other industrial uses but when the mines dried up, tourism of the beautiful crystal clear Rainbow River stepped up to claim the crown jewel of Dunnellon’s attractions.
It was about a 1.5 mile walk back to Blue Run Park where people kayak and tube down the Rainbow River ending their watery journey at this park. It was very busy already and so was the neighboring Cajun restaurant called Swampy’s. The colorful Rainbow River certainly lived up to its name. After all the dark tannin-filled swamp water surrounding the crooked Withlacoochee River it was nice to see the sparkling spring-fed Rainbow River shimmering in the daylight as last night when we’d walked by it was too dark out to see it. Shannon stopped to use the bathroom at the park and we continued on past groups of kayakers and hikers down the blue blazed side trail returning to the Florida Trail which was currently a paved bike path shared with cyclists, walkers, runners and day hikers.
We had only another mile or so of paved bike path to go when we saw a couple with their bikes propped up next to the trail looking intently at something in the sandy brush. Curiously we asked the cyclists what they were looking at. The lady pointed out a gopher tortoise which are very vulnerable if not borderline endangered tortoises that live only in Florida and very few other places in the world. Shannon and I checked out Ms. Gopher Tortoise from a distance as we weren’t sure if we’d ever seen one before. Immediately we recognized the species of tortoise as the same one that we had seen with our friend Pine Stick way back down by Lake Okeechobee. This tortoise looked exactly the same with her big meaty arm dangling in front of her shell, each tipped with long pointy nails that Cardi B would be jealous of and she could freaking move! This tortoise would destroy the hare any day of the week in a race like in the old fairy tales. Before we knew it, the endangered tortoise tore off into the brush and was gone, having disappeared into a dark den that she had dug in the grass and sand mounds. It was really cool to have seen two Gopher Tortoises now on our hike. As we walked and looked around us in this spot of trail, we realized that there were tons of gopher tortoise holes all over the place, especially in the little spit of land between where the pavement ended for the bike path and where the remote control plane airfield started. It was a striking culture clash to see endangered gopher tortoise dens of these animals struggling to survive in a strip of protected land clustered right behind people with a little bit of extra cash flying their high-tech model airplanes on a manicured field for no other purpose than to have some extraneous hobby. It was saddening yet hopeful to see these ancient tortoises who had thrived for millions of years whose dwindling numbers now made it critical to fight for their right to existence on this little spit of land between a bike path and commercial space. Go little gopher tortoises go!
We lucked out and had a little bit of hiking through the woods for a while which was nice and then of course we’re dumped out onto a highway where we roadwalked for 4 miles. The sun was stifling and we were passed by noisy cars, buses and trucks. We put our headphones in and got through the road walking by not thinking about it. I think so far on the west side of Orlando we’ve hiked close to probably over 100 miles on roads which maybe if I did the Florida Trail again I’d hike the east side as it seems more wild and off of the roads. Unfortunately road walking is the nature of the Florida Trail which didn’t get put together until the 1970s when most of the land had been snatched up by developers and private landowners. Today the Florida Trail is a patchwork of public land connected by roads. It’s like a quilt of Americana going through wildlife preserves and hunting land, ranches and private farms, levees and roads. The trail winds through heavily populated and touristic areas like Disney World and the Florida Keys interspersed with Air Force bases and Native American reservations, small towns, country, farmland, canals, blackwater swamps, sandy pine forests and dense jungles. It’s been quite an interesting experience and in this land touched by both flood and fire it is very interesting to see how much wildlife still thrives. Even though Florida is incredibly built up, enough people have stopped and looked at what we are doing as a culture and realized that they needed to preserve some of the land and water for animals and plants, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
The roadwalk wasn’t terrible but it was hot and we were excited when we could finally leave the busy traffic of the road. The trail spit us out on Pruitt Trailhead which is a wildlife preserve sandwiched between two horse ranches. Dappled cattle grazed near old oak hammocks, lowing gently as they ate flowers and long spring grasses. It was quite pretty country out this way. The cattle seem to all have babies and the little calves banded together in groups, waggling their ears and stamping their hooves at us trying to figure out what exactly we were with our hiking poles and backpacks.
Shannon and I parked our butts on a picnic bench under the shade of Spanish moss dangling in heavy gray green curtains from the live oak trees. We paused for a moment to eat some of the food that we had packed out with us like chicken wings and pizza. Yum yum! Supposedly there was a water source here and in our navigation app people were calling it a horse trough. Delightful. Unfortunately the only horse trough that we had seen was next to the highway entrance and the old cement structure filled with broken glass beer bottles and trash and was completely bone dry. We rationed our water even though it was pretty hot out and could’ve drank at least another liter. When we decided it was time to pack up I headed over to the portapotty where I noticed an old water pump nestled behind the fence line. I thought to myself, “What the heck? That is not a horse trough!” I tried pumping the handle which thankfully worked. It was awesome so we filtered some water from the secret water pump. It was a good thing that we filled up because of the 3 liters of water we each started with we only had 1 liter left and it was quite a ways until the next water source. Each of us made a Hiker Trash Special electrolyte drink with added caffeine to get us through the last part of the day. The portapotty was delightful as there were 4 little lime green tree frogs hiding behind the toilet.
As we hydrated and packed up our backpacks, we noticed there were a lot of RV trailers and moving trucks pulling up in the nearby field next to some cattle. It turned out this was a checkpoint of a big adventure and orienteering race called the Sea to Sea race where race participants started in Crystal River on the Gulf of Mexico and paddled up rivers, mountain biked and trail ran until they arrived in St. Augustine on the Atlantic Ocean. They could only navigate with compasses and maps to hit the 72 checkpoints set out for them which sounded cool. We used to have some friends who did orienteering races and they’re pretty intense. The big trucks were setting up flags, food, water and drinks out for the racers and it looked like a veritable operation. We hiked over where I just checked in with one of the van volunteers about if we were going to have to watch out on the Florida Trail for the racers and if there were any campsites that we should avoid in case they were being used for water or first aid stations. The volunteer assured us that the race would only be happening on the bike path which we soon found out crisscrossed the Florida Trail at many points. Then we thanked the volunteer for the information and sighed a big breath of relief that in addition to the heat, sheriffs and Rainbow People that we weren’t going to have to deal with the adventure race participants too much. Boy was I wrong about that…
As we started to head into the woods, five women on horseback came out of the woods where the orange Florida Trail blazes led. Their horses were lathered in sweat from the heat of the day and we stepped off to the side of the trail as we didn’t want to spook them as sometimes the big animals get freaked out by our backpacks and hiking poles. One of the ladies told us that the trail was sunny for a little bit but then dipped into the shade which is a nice relief and we were thankful for that. The same lady told us she broke her tailbone only eight weeks ago but was back in the saddle and complained how she was now feeling it. I couldn’t believe she was sitting on a horse for a few hours after breaking her tailbone but some people really love what they do. We thanked the horsewomen for the trail conditions info, packed up and headed out before it got any later in the day.
We already figured since we had a late start that we’d probably have to hike into the night which was fine because it’s been pretty hot during the day. I guess the weather went from unseasonably cold in the 20s and 30s in Florida to now swinging the opposite way being unusually hot in the high 80s. I looked at the weather for some trail towns a couple hundred miles north and they seem to be about 10° cooler than where we were so that was excellent motivation to get the miles done. Hopefully we’d catch more of the sea breeze once we left the thick jungles and swamps of central Florida.
Earlier in the afternoon with all the heat we saw a pretty good sized snake sunning himself in the middle of the trail. We thought it was a non-venomous black racer snake which tend to move very fast which is why they are called racers. However after looking at the photos later we realized that the orange-yellow throat of the snake, how long the snake was, the fact we were near a swamp instead of the forest and how slowly the animal moved meant it wasn’t a racer but instead a close relative – the endangered indigo snake. After taking photos of the snake and waiting for it to slither away, Shannon gently encouraged the snake to move out of the middle of the trail and we continued on.
The trail took us on the Cross Florida Greenway which we learned was the site of a former canal that was dug out in the early 1900s to provide faster travel for ships. Instead of sailing all the way around Florida and Key West, boats could just cut through from Jacksonville on the Atlantic coast down towards the Dunnellon area on the Gulf of Mexico. It was interesting because the canal building project was dropped on the onslaught of World War II and people argued for the canal as offering protection for the US shipping fleet from German U-boats that were gathering in the Atlantic. After WWII ended and the 1950s and 60s rolled around and commercial development boomed in Florida, an environmentalist named Marjorie Carr stepped in and advocated to protect the rivers and wildlands surrounding the former canal. She had grown up canoeing the Withlacoochee River and couldn’t bear to see all of the wildlife like manatees, bears, wild cats and fish disappear to industrialization. Finally in 1971, President Richard Nixon granted the greenway official protection status and is home to several endangered species including the scrub jay which is a blue, white and silver teeny tiny bird that relies on this type of sandy environment to survive. With central Florida being so overdeveloped for residential and commercial businesses it’s difficult for the endangered bird to find enough wild space to live.
Over the years the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway has transformed into a network of multi-use trails for bicyclists, horseback riders, mountain bikers, runners, walkers and even the Florida Trail western loop goes through it. It was really kind of a funny little place looking at the map as it almost was like you could out stretch your arms and touch neighborhoods on either side of the Greenway. Hiking through these woods felt like we were just on the border of civilization and the wilderness and especially as night fell you could see lights on either side of the forest from nearby houses and the roadway. Despite the sound of dogs calling out from the neighborhood yards and honking cars we spotted several rabbits in the trail and an absolutely gorgeous buck with a nice rack of antlers staring at us from the forest. It was marvelous this little sliver of green bisecting the cities. There were even signs posted everywhere that there was a high concentration of black bears in this area but luckily we didn’t see any.
As night fell the Florida Trail merged with the paved bike paths for a while and we waved to a couple of trail cams posted under some roadway underpasses. Our hiking friend Pickle had told us about these trail cams and there was one on the bike path from Inverness to Dunnellon that would take your picture and then alert the sheriff about someone being out there. Pickle had been night hiking to avoid the heat of the day and said he had to jump in the woods when the sheriff came immediately after he saw the red flash of the light of the camera. There are signs posted all over that bike path about how it closes at sunset and I guess the local law enforcement takes it pretty seriously. Pickle managed to narrowly avoid the law and we hoped that up here the law will be a little bit more lax as there are lots of nice tenting sites and it’s more hiker friendly then down south.
We plowed through about 18 or 19 miles and at one of the first campsites we decided to call it quits instead of moving on another 3 or so miles to the next camp. Water was scarce here so we stopped at a trailhead parking lot for the bike path and filtered water from a bike washing station there which consisted of a hose and platform for your bike. It was nice to have fresh water and both of us didn’t realize how much water we drink during the day. Lately we’ve been drinking maybe 1 L for every 5 or 6 miles but today it was so hot out that we were consuming about 1 L of water every 2 or 3 miles. It kind of felt like we were back in the Mojave Desert like on the PCT where it was so dry that 1 L of water gets you 3 miles. We’ll probably have to start drinking more water which is no big deal.
I used to be pretty scared of night hiking but now it’s just whatever. I’m kind of excited to see a bear or a panther whereas before panther or mountain lion scared the ever living crap out of me. I think what I’m most scared of (and I don’t think I’ll ever lose this fear) is people. People always are the most dangerous predator on these trails and hopefully as we enter the 600 sq.mi. wilderness of Ocala National Forest that we will avoid the weirdos. Ocala is an interesting place and is home to the winter Rainbow Gathering who are this group of hippies collecting together since the 1970s and living this alternative lifestyle traveling from national forest to national forest and partying. I had a friend on the Appalachian Trail who was known as a pretty hard-core partier. When he returned back from his day or two of hanging out with the Rainbow People he had this wild and fearful look in his eyes and kept repeating how he’ll never go back there and how the hippie people party way too hard and do way too many hard drugs and lots of interesting squatters who showed up. He said it wasn’t the Rainbow People themselves who presented danger but the crowds of people from the area looking for hard drugs who ruined the whole experience. I’m hoping we can avoid these guys on the Florida Trail. Shivers ran down my spine as I recalled hearing some weird music in the woods at the Rainbow People’s spring camp in Virginia and was sincerely hoping we wouldn’t run into them in Ocala but you never know.
According to some Internet people looking to get clout and more visits to their websites (aka more money from advertisements) have circulated that Ocala is the murder forest. Now granted any area of a country is going to have murders from the Appalachian Trail to the nice suburbs of your hometown. I think people looking to dispose of bodies often go to the forest because law enforcement is minimal and there aren’t many eyes watching. Well anyway we’ll just keep an eye out for weirdos as we usually do. Also supposedly the military bombs part of this forest but I don’t think we go through that section of Ocala National Forest. Finally there are supposed to be a lot of black bears here which we had already seen signs posted warning us about them. We hung our food from the trees tonight just in case and maybe we will finally even see a Florida black bear in the next week or so.
Tonight when we arrived at camp it wasn’t a very exciting place with one of the picnic tables decaying away and the grass long at hip height. We found a flat spot and pitched our tent setting up our shelter under the jeweled stars peeking through the treetops. Even though it was nearing bedtime I was very energized probably from caffeine drinks and had a bit of a hard time sleeping.
Halfway through the night you could hear the adventure racers go by which was a 72 hours affair with no sleep. The bicyclists would yell loudly to their teammates waking us up straight out of a dead sleep. The racers must not know that us campers were only a stone’s throw away and I cursed the race coordinator who assured us earlier today that the race wouldn’t be near the Florida Trail. Besides the shouting cyclists next to us there was also a roadway where you could see the headlights of the cars through the tent walls and hear the roar of the engines. Typically I don’t like sleeping so close to the road because you don’t know what’s going to happen with people being able to access the trail so easily but we made a promise to get up early in the morning and get going at first light.
I ended up having to put earplugs in not because of the road traffic but because of the 150+ adventure racers shouting and cycling by the campsite during the night. The racers were on the nearby bike path and I’d be so close to falling asleep when I hear one of them yell loudly, hooting and hollering to get them through 3 days of racing and not sleeping. The race was pretty interesting like the civilian version of army ranger training and or special forces training. What I ended up loving the most about the race tonight was the fact that I have ear plugs with me.