Florida Trail: Day 52
Feb 26, 2022
Mile: 482.1 to 502.9 (+.5mi for 21.3 total miles)
Start: Ben’s Hitching Post Campground, Ocala National Forest
Finish: Backyard of The 88 Store, Ocala National Forest
This morning I woke up to the sounds of something going, “Thump! Bounce, bounce. bounce. Thump! Bounce, bounce, bounce,” followed by running next to our tent. The sound kept repeating so grumpily I stuck my head out of the tent to see what was going on. An RV camper staying at the campground who maybe couldn’t see our tent (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt) was throwing one of those dog ball launchers that looks like a lacrosse stick. The tent camping field was almost completely empty save for our tent in the middle of the field and a couple tents bordering the woods line maybe 100 yds from us. This guy either had terrible aim, was half blind or maybe just was an inconsiderate jerk who was launching his tennis balls a little too close to our tent for comfort at the wonderfully early hour of 6:30am. I was more concerned he was going to hit us head on in our muted gray-green tent that if you stretched your imagination could be mistaken for a big rock. So I stood up out of the tent, stretching myself to get a better look at what was going on. My eyes quickly locked on the rotund late 60s guy throwing the dog ball at our tent. Both the man and his dumb dog looked equally surprised to see me as I seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the tenting field. I waved at the man and he got weirded out and decided it would be best to stop throwing the ball so close to our camping tent at 6:30 in the morning. The man quickly pretended to be doing something else to avoid eye contact with me and called his dog back to him before returning back to his RV.
We were definitely awake now after almost being mortared by doggy tennis balls in our tent so Shannon and I took it as a sign to pack up. Shannon really wanted to find a table to cook some breakfast so we headed over to the office area of Ben’s Hitching Post Campground to see what we could scrounge up. The laundry room table area was empty so we sat next to rows of washing machines and dryers while chowing down on a “healthy” breakfast of Dollar General oatmeal, peach gummy rings, flaming hot Cheetos washed down with tea and coffee. We talked to the new manager of the campground and watched as one of the maintenance workers painted the pool a new coat of white in between handfuls of flaming hot Cheetos.
A lady had come by our tent this morning and given us each water bottles before we packed up which was nice trail magic even though we had access to fresh drinking water from the spigots in the tent area. She had also been tenting in the corner of the big field near us and had a hummingbird feeder and a birdfeeder going which she cleverly hid behind a tree so anyone from the road wouldn’t be able to see it. As we were eating breakfast in the laundry room, this same lady waltzed over with a cigarette in mouth and grabbed her laundry. It was fine talking to her at first until she kept gushing about our appearances.
“My, what pretty faces you have! Such youthful features,” the laundry lady smiled stiffly with only the bottom half of her face, her eyes strangely not crinkling as they do in a genuine smile. We laughed sheepishly, eyebrows raised slightly at each other and replied a thank you to her.
Laundry lady paused for a moment from pulling her clothes out of the dryer and inspected us with scrutinizing pale eyes. She leaned in closer to comment, “My what pretty gorgeous teeth you have!”
We laughed a little less enthusiastically this time and the polite smiles fell off our faces. As discreetly as possible we started packing up our breakfast and backpacks. Laundry lady watched us as she inhaled another drag of her cigarette, holding the smoke in while her eyes searched us head to toe. Her thin lips parted exhaling the fumes and her croaky voice hissed, “What glowing skin you have! Your skin is so nice and healthy.”
My creeper radar dial went off the charts while my gut instinct told me to GTFO now. It felt like we’re in a freaking fairytale with this laundry lady being the big bad wolf dressed up in grandma’s clothing and we were Little Red Riding Hood. Her comments made it seem very likely that she was about to eat us or maybe make our skin into lamps like Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. All we knew was that we didn’t want to stick around to find out if the water bottles she gave us to drink were laced with something. I was definitely picking up on some Jeffrey Dahmer vibes. Or were the vibes more on the level of “Florida Man on bath salts eating someone’s face off?” Regardless, we tried to remain calm as we told ourselves that the laundry lady seemed nice enough, just a little bit odd. I mean we were nice enough people and also sort of weird. But we also didn’t comment to random people about how beautiful their skin, teeth and smiles were because, well, that is some serial killer sh*t.
As Shannon and I were shoving our gear into our backpacks, laundry lady backed out of our personal space and changed the subject from assessing our skin for her black market human lampshades to telling us all about how she got kicked out of her last RV park and how this campground one was way better. I’m not sure how decaying plywood bathroom stalls with holes the size of your foot busted through them or nasty showers with ripped moldy curtains, insects crawling on the walls and broken faucet handles could be better than many places but hey, to each their own.
Deliberately we shoved our camping gear in our packs and ensuring nothing too important would fall out, we were quickly on our way out of the campground putting distance between us and Laundry Lady. As we left we spotted a couple of the local campground cats dashing into the woods and stopped to talk with the maintenance guy who worked at the campground. He is part Shawnee and part Chickasaw and was very excited about our Florida Trail journey. It was also a bonus for us that he didn’t comment on our youthful smiles or full sets of teeth or make us feel like he was going to “put the lotion on the skin.” The maintenance guy was a sweetheart and told us about how he likes to ride horses and how if we ever came back to check out this area for riding as there’s a guy who really knows his stuff about horses and the “correct way” to break them. I guess back in the day his ancestors would break horses (aka to teach the horse how to be okay with a saddle and tack and how to carry and work with a person on its back) differently from how people do today. If a person weighed 100 lbs you would eventually work up to that weight using bags of oats. You’d start with draping 20 lb bags of oats over the horse’s back and train him from there. Then each day you add a little bit more weight to the oats and because horses like the smell of oats they remain calm with any weight on their backs. I guess the oats make it easier to eventually exchange the grains out for a human. Alternatively you can break a horse in a body of water where they’re only thinking of one thing and that is keeping their head above water. The logic is that they don’t have time to think about who is sitting on their back when they’re trying not to drown. Our Shawnee and Chickasaw friend said when you sit on a horse’s back you not only break them for riding but you break their spirit and they get angry and will resent you. Maybe there’s some truth to that – it sounded logical to me but then again I don’t know a whole lot about breaking horses having only done it one time.
Just outside of the campground the trail turned muddy as we hadn’t seen the likes of since Big Cypress Swamp. We carefully picked our way through the peat moss and mud puddles until we came to a decision point where the trail ran through a swamp that easily flooded. People on the navigation app commented that If the past couple miles of Florida Trail had any standing water on them that the next 5 miles of trail would be pretty bad and you’d be wading through deep water and mud. The alternative was a road walk on a busy highway and we needed to pick from the lesser of the two evils. We’ve been extremely thankful that the trail has been relatively dry so far and thought that there was a good chance the swamp would be dry enough and it wasn’t a big deal if we had to get our feet a little wet. It turned out we didn’t have to worry and spent the next 5 miles walking over wooden plank bridges with some shallow water under them and dry flat pine scrub, palmetto forest and beautiful jungles. We saw lots of animal scat from coyotes, wild hogs and bobcats but no animals since they tend to be more active around twilight and we’d gotten a late start today. The bridges were a welcome sight to keep our feet dry, especially as the peat moss swallowed up almost our entire hiking pole when we tested the water’s depth off the bridge.
The day was heating up again to be a pretty sweaty one. We hiked fast and passed a little Stonehenge area where someone had taken the time to set up a few rock sculptures. We were near a youth camp and someone had written the words “Go Nude” in the sandy road with a hiking pole or stick. Oh geez. I was hoping we wouldn’t see any naked hippie hikers or nudist colonies out here. You never know what you’re going to see on the Florida Trail so I’m not going to discount that we won’t run into naked people. I’m just praying that we won’t see any.
On this section of trail you could call a nearby youth camp to gain permission to come onsite to get water and sit at their picnic tables. Today was a Saturday and when we called they were busy with campers so instead of picnic tables and filtered water, we stopped and sat on the ground for lunch and filtered water from a nice dark river. The tannins leaching out of the plants and soil had colored the river a deep rich burnt coffee but it tasted wonderful after you ran it through the water filter. We decided that sitting next to the river would be a good spot for a lunch break since we had limited water sources today on trail and this was the only reliable water for our entire 20 mile day.
Clearing away the debris and pine needles around us so ticks and other insects wouldn’t be so keen on joining our picnic, we set up our groundsheet for our tent and filtered water from the creek. It was quite peaceful and the palmettos and live oaks gave us shade. However as I was cooking up some gluten-free ramen, I felt something crawling up my leg and looked down to spot a teeny tiny little red deer tick or baby tick crawling up my leg. I grabbed the little Lyme Disease carrying bastard with my tweezers and held my lighter up to the tick’s body to burn it since it would come crawling right back if I let it go. Sighing, I knew we really needed to apply more permethrin on our clothes and gear since it’s been six weeks since we last sprayed down.
Permethrin is a nasty chemical that is unfortunately a necessary evil when you’re hiking through tick territory (basically anywhere that isn’t covered in snow or a barren desert). It’s easy to pick up at a Walmart or outdoor gear shop for about $10. You take all of your hiking gear like backpacks, tents, shoes, gaiters, tarps, mosquito netting, socks and clothing outside in a well-ventilated area where you spray everything with a layer of permethrin, ensuring you don’t get any on your skin. Then you wait a couple hours to ensure the chemical has dried before you can use your gear without having to worry about ticks, chiggers or mosquitoes. Ticks absolutely hate permethrin which is a wonderful thing as illnesses that come from tiny tick bites are extremely debilitating. Some of the more concerning diseases caused by ticks range from the paralyzing Lyme Disease to the deadly Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to the newly discovered Alpha-gal Syndrome where the bitten person develops an allergic reaction to red meat. Yep, you could be bitten by a tick the size of a ballpoint pen tip and never be able to enjoy steak again or be unable to ever move half of your body again. I’d take permethrin any day over a tickborne illness.
As I burned the tick I’d picked off my leg to a crisp with my BIC mini lighter, I hoped that I hadn’t sat us next to a tick nest. And yes, a tick nest is an actual thing which is pure nightmare fuel where hundreds of baby ticks hatch and swarm all over you. We have unfortunately experienced this terrible phenomenon while backcountry camping on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia. Back here in Florida sitting next to Eaton Creek I had sneaking suspicions that we were near a tick nest as over the course of the next 20 minutes I picked up 5 or 6 ticks off me and Shannon got a couple as well. Each one I burned as when I experimented with submerging the ticks in DEET bug spray, it didn’t do anything except slow them down.
Shannon questioned me about why I would kill a tick as there are millions if not billions of them. For me, killing a tick is more about personal satisfaction and redemption for all the people and animals who have debilitating diseases because of tick bites. In the backcountry the art of killing a tick is ensuring you either place the nasty critter on a flat surface or in your tweezers to expose its hard shelled body. Then take your lighter and burn the crap out of the tick until it sounds like the pop of popcorn kernels cooking or the crackle of sesame seeds or nuts roasting in a pan. Once you hear that little pop you know the tick is burst and dead. I like popping them because I know they won’t come back as squishing them doesn’t always work. Now there’s one less blood sucking piece of crap out there in the world. Maybe I’m projecting my anger on these ticks – who knows.
Prior to lunch I had been getting kind of lightheaded so it was good we stopped and filled up on rice noodle ramen with freeze-dried chicken, some sardines and a Hiker Trash Special drink (aka 1L water + 1 electrolyte packet + 1 caffeine drink mix packet). When the ticks got to be too much to bear, we packed up and headed out for another 10 miles to a Florida Trail staple: The 88 Store.
The 88 Store is a very hiker friendly store also catering to local residents and ATVers out in Ocala National Forest. This gas station turned backcountry bar serving very cheap drinks and convenience store type food also allows Florida Trail hikers to camp for free behind the store. These days they even offer showers, bathrooms, drinking water and picnic tables for hikers. It’s a true oasis. Logistically The 88 Store is also where the West and East Florida Trail loops around Orlando connect back up. On a map the Florida Trail looks a little strange compared to your typical trail as it has a figure 8 in the middle with a tail coming out of the top and bottom.
We spent the afternoon hiking through hot but beautiful trail in a mix of pine forest, cypress swamp and palmetto jungles listening to audiobooks and dodging lots of bear poop. We haven’t seen any black bears yet but the Ocala National Forest is supposed to have quite a lot of them so I’m sure we will eventually spot some. As the sun lowered in the sky my body started getting tired from the hot weather and the rolling hills which provided some of our first encounters actual elevation today on the FT which is surprising. After spending the last 700 miles on nearly perfectly flat trail, hiking up and down on these 50 foot tall hills provided us with the biggest elevation gains that we’ve seen so far. I’m pretty sure the driveway at our old apartment in Cincinnati was steeper than these hills but our legs were spoiled from all the flat walking and the rolling hills actually made me a bit exhausted which is really sad. Only 6 months ago we were crushing 13,000 ft mountain passes like it was no big deal on the Pacific Crest Trail. Now on the Florida Trail we’re crying about a 50 ft anthill. Wow, we’ve really let ourselves get soft!
As the sun sunk low behind the pines we wandered through the trees looking for a side trail that apparently no longer exists. There used to be a blue blazed side trail that would take you to the infamous 88 Store but according to the navigation app’s comments and looking at the twisted charred metal signs, it looks like a wildfire caused the blue blazed trail to disappear. We decided to bushwhack using our GPS track and maps and soon we were spit out onto a forest service road that had such soft sand that it made it difficult to walk. The sand was a fine silky grit that swallowed your foot up like quicksand and made for slow going. A couple on an ATV drove by passing us just as night was settling in. We arrived at the hiker oasis known as The 88 Store, dropped our backpacks on the side of the building and joined the chaos out front. Lots of people were drinking and partying at the country store and before we knew it someone already offered to buy us drinks from the bar inside. Apparently back in the day this was a place where you could procure illicit moonshine. Up until recently the bar would stay open till 5 or 6 AM but it would just be fights and chaos and who knows what else. New owners recently took over the establishment and now the bar closes at midnight which the bartenders seem pretty relieved about. Yikes!
As we entered the store, we were greeted by a super sweet bartender named Barbara who took care of us, telling us where to camp and how things worked for hikers here. As she asked us what we wanted, a guy sitting in the corner of the store offered to pay for our drinks which was insanely kind of him. He had just moved back to the area from upstate New York after 5 years and was in the real estate business. We chatted with him for a while and he was very kind and sweet. When I went inside to use the bathroom, he confided in Shannon that his son who was 40-years-old had just died from some sort of cancer and his mother-in-law had just fell in upstate New York and broke her ankle. Unfortunately his son left behind two kids and the mom decided she didn’t want anything to do with them so instead of them going to foster care, this guy and his wife moved down to Florida to take care of his now orphaned grandchildren.
This guy was very sweet and we chatted with him for a while before this spindly and extremely drunk old man with his even drunker wife interrupted. As we debated which one of the two of them were more inebriated, the old man jumped in the driver’s seat of his convertible and off the couple went down the road, both of them if not completely blacked out were definitely browned out. Come to think of it, most of the people at the bar were pretty wasted but every single one of them drove off and nothing was said. I guess I’m glad I’m not driving around here.
The sweet guy whose son just died ended up buying us another round and we sat and talked with him for a while longer as my head spun. I was definitely a bit dehydrated as I had run out of water before we got here and all I had to drink were a couple of Truly seltzers. I went inside and bought a microwave meal for $1.99 of mashed potatoes with beef that looked like cat food and tasted like cat food but I needed something to eat or I knew I would get sick. When I came back out this kind of jackass guy sat down and started trying to pick a fight with our friend in the corner for no reason. After a while of us trying to get this jerk to leave our talk about something else, our new friend gave up and said I’m going home and we thanked him for beers.
We went to go leave and set up our tent behind the bar but the douche guy kept trying to talk to us. I was concerned that if we went behind the store to the camping yard that he’d follow us so we stayed out front near the other people in the bar. He was a trucker with a bunch of his teeth missing (pretty much everyone had teeth missing at this bar) and he was super sexist and very opinionated. When he asked Shannon what he did for a living, Shannon curtly explained while looking for a way out of the conversation. As an afterthought the guy decided to ask what I did and I told him I used to build jet engines as an engineer and he lost it. He said he knows he’s sexist and flat out told us that he believes the only place for a woman is in the kitchen or in the bedroom. I rolled my eyes and said, “Well I’ve heard that many times before at work and guess what – I don’t give a sh*t what you think.”
The old trucker laughed at my response but hey, at least he could admit he had a problem. He also found it hilarious that we didn’t know how far away things were since we never lived in Florida and this is our first time here. He just kept cracking up about how we didn’t know about highways and local roads like how he did. Good on you man, you’re a trucker down here and you probably know all the roads, all the lot lizards and yet it looks like you can’t find your way around a f*cking toothbrush.
Luckily the drunk jerk trucker took off and Shannon and I settled up for $5 in order to access the showers and set up a tent behind the store. My head was spinning after the two drinks and the hangover was already setting in hard. Shannon volunteered to find out where the drinking water was. I finished showering and then set up my sleeping bag and waited for Shannon to return. 10 minutes turned into 20 and then 30 minutes later my headache was raging and I was starting to feel nauseous from dehydration. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable walking around by myself here with the drunk patrons but with Shannon having completely disappeared, I went up to the bar wearing my down jacket on because I didn’t have a bra on. Of course Shannon was sitting belly up to the bar drinking. I was kind of pissed but expected nothing less and asked the bartender lady myself where I might find drinking water. She pointed to the hose out front and I didn’t want to make it awkward by being mad at Shannon even though I was furious and trying to hold back waves of nausea from dehydration.
As I was leaving to grab drinking water, a guy at the bar next to drunk Shannon was from the area sort of near where I grew up and wanted to chat all about how awesome Massachusetts is. All I wanted to do was drink water and go to bed because I had a splitting dehydration headache that I only made worse by drinking alcohol. Then to top it off the Massachusetts guy starts asking why I had a coat on if I’m from New England it’s not cold here in Florida.
What I wanted to say was, “Well sir, I’m not wearing a bra because it is super sweaty and stinky and I just showered and am trying to pretend that I’m a total greaseball as I go to bed. I also don’t want you and other weird hillbilly dudes with 3 teeth staring at my boobs through my t-shirt so I put on my oversized jacket that you’re now also staring at.”
What I actually said was something like, “My jacket is comfy and now I have to go away.” Masshole kept pressing the question and I just ignored him. Then I said good night to everyone, filled up my water bottle with the hose and went to sleep in our tent behind the bar. Barbara the bartender said to make sure to store our food bags in the shower area and close the door because they’ve had bears come up on their property before so don’t risk leaving your food in your tent. I thanked her, put our food and smelly soaps in the shower, plugged in my external battery to charge and tried to go to sleep. Maybe an hour or two later Shannon stumbled into the backyard after having lengthy hangouts and drinks with the locals. His breath reeked of booze and I just rolled over, ignored him and tried to keep drinking water. During the night I heard something walking through the woods that sounded vaguely like a bear but maybe it was just my imagination. The spinning air vent on top of the shower area was kind of creepy but you got used to it creaking like a door swinging open. Some sort of loud electrical motor kicked on every 10 minutes sometimes waking me up straight out of a dead sleep but what can you do – it was free camping.