Florida

Lost in Florida – Surprises at Sabal Point and How I Got A New Trail Name

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On the trail

It started off as an innocent seven mile hike. S assured us that we wouldn’t have to wade through miles of swamp water, and on that point, at least he was correct.

The Sabal Point trail is a surprising natural gem buried amidst a large conglomeration of apartment buildings, houses, and condos of the same name. It’s hardly the place you’d expect to find an untouched spread of palm hammocks, marshes, and oaks. But there it is: the trail head innocuously placed at the end of a dead end street. You do rather feel as if you’ve been invited over to someone’s house.

Our goal for that Saturday was to work on carrying weight and to that end we’d all loaded our packs. M and S have had the brilliant idea of using bags of charcoal so they can burn it once done with training. Since I believe training should never end I’m carrying around a gallon of water, my old weight vest, and various bits and bobs to add up to 25 pounds. Need to get up to 35.

The trail itself is an old railway bed, elevated a few feet above very swampy forest. We are in Florida spring and the trail was dotted with what looked like bluebells, pink star shaped flowers, and red berry bushes whose Christmasy aspect seemed out of place.

Christmas berries?

One of the things about training is to check out your gear and M quickly realized the Osprey pack she’d bought was not for her – too rigid in the waistband and an odd shape that causes your arms to stick out at the side. Fortunately REI has a good return policy so she’s now trying my fav – a tried and true Gregory (I have 3, in all different sizes).

Enough of the gear talk. How did our hike deteriorate into something more sinister? As I was blithely walking along, chattering away, S suddenly yelled out, “You stepped on a snake.” My immediate reaction was, “Oh no, is it Ok?”, to which S (somewhat insensitively I thought), said, “No, it’s dead; you stepped on its head.” Not sure he realized that sounded like the middle verse of a rap song.

I could barely bring myself to look, but as J and S inspected said creature, S looked more closely – and said, “It’s not just a snake; it’s a water moccasin!”

Water moccasin

At that point my guilt over the execution quickly by evaporated and instead I decided I was the hero of the hike. I mean, perhaps I saved countless lives! I don’t know much about snakes, but even I know water moccasins are BAD.

After the excitement of the snake we were looking forward to reaching the river, promised at 3.5 miles. But after a mere 1.75 (according to my trusty Fitbit) we encountered a forbidding metal gate plastered with no trespassing signs warning of prosecution if violated. Whoever posted them looked like they meant business.

So since training called for more miles we simply turned back, hiked back to the cars, and then hiked the same trail all over again to reach our 7 mile goal. The snake was still there the second time around – not unsurprisingly in the same position as before.

Not quite what we’d expected. But it was a beautiful Florida day, we carried our weight, and I now have a new trail name – Snake Stomper.

Be careful where you tread

Testing, Trails, and Thanksgiving

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Excitement was palpable. The goal was within reach. The long hour and a half of inching my way ever forward almost made worth it. And yes, I had finally arrived at the Covid drive through testing tent!

I wasn’t there for any particular reason, except that the numbers are terrible in Orlando and I feel it’s our civic duty to get tested. And as a plug for the folks organizing free testing (rapid, PCR, or both available, no questions asked), the entire process was unbelievably well organized. Nonetheless, Friday’s triumph at a testing sight was not what I had in mind for whatever quasi adventure we can hope for these days.

Friend S has a book entitled 50 Best Hikes in Central Florida (yes, I’m sure many of you are doubtful there are enough to even create a list of 10) and has been methodically working his way through them.

J on one of many “bridges” crossing the swamps

Yesterday’s trail took S, M, J and me about an hour north of Orlando, to the other side of Deland just inside the Ocala National Forest. The plan was to hike the St. Francis Trail, which supposedly would lead us to the remnants of a pre-railroad days logging town on the banks of the St. John’s River. The Yellow Loop Trail on the way back was advertised as including two artesian wells where we could refill water bottles if we so desired. (We were not about to gamble on that and continued to lug our 64 ounces of water apiece).

Although Florida weather has been just cool enough that the summer wildflowers are gone, the cedar and palm filled swamps lining much of the trail make up for it. They’re covered with beds of what I presume is algae – so sleek and smooth that at first blush it looks like a meadow. Move away from the river, though, and you are walking through fields of tall Florida pines, as straight as pencils, with dry meadows of shoulder high brush.

But despite all this natural beauty – an historical adventure this was not. We never did see the remains of the town – when we took a brief detour to the river banks we found an ancient, rusty seat that had once apparently been part of a car and a beer can but that was it. The artesian wells were nowhere to be located. Oh, and the only hint of the logging railroad that was also touted as a feature might have been this bizarre guardrail stuck in the middle of nowhere?

Really? A guardrail?

It’s a beautiful, beautiful hike. As always (and especially with S’s choices!) it was a bit boggy. But by now anything that includes standing water of less than 6 inches seems practically desert like to us. (If we go down this path much longer, waders are going to be in order.)

Who knows. It’s Florida, after all, and nature overtakes man’s footprints in less than a New York minute.

By the way, this hike is advertised as 7.7 miles. It’s 10.3. But as this pandemic drones on, and Thanksgiving approaches, I’m giving thanks for any extra miles that are out there.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.

Returning to Running

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Lake Ivanhoe – my regular running route

Among the other things that have taken a pause during the pandemic (this blog included, at times) is my running regime. Mind you, there was never much of a regime there in the first instance – but typically there were one or two 5ks per week on the Y treadmill and a longer weekend run. Just enough to make sure I had some real cardio to accompany yoga and stair climbing for whatever that next big hike/climb might be.

The Y is no more for me, at least until Orlando looks like it’s on the road to recovery. Somehow a gym full of people all breathing deeply on one another just doesn’t make sense. But surely, you say, the wide open spaces are still there for a run?

Well, yes, but I must admit it’s hard to get motivated when when your past plans for adventure (Katahdin in Maine) all fall through and it’s well nigh to impossible to make any plans certain for the future. We were hoping for Bolivia, but now, due to schedules, not to mention an uncertain political situation, that’s not for sure. J dreams of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, as do I, but who knows which countries will even allow us in next summer? You get my point. Normally, by October we’d be booking plane tickets.

The olden days of 2019 – flying over Istanbul

Since running for me is instrumental, lack of a defined goal is hard. But one thing that I have discovered over the last couple of months is audio workouts. Chained to my Fitbit as I am (see Chained To My Fitbit, a post from 2015 when I got my very first one), earlier this year I bought the Premium package, which comes with a steady diet of online workouts for every part of your anatomy, mindfulness and sleep meditations, and yes, audio work outs for running, intervals, and walking. And they work! Even without that defined goal, when a cheery voice in your AirPods tells you there’s just two more minutes at threshold pace – you do it!

So off I toddled this morning to try out a new workout – this time a running meditation. I was doing pretty well with it but for the distraction of a witch paddle board event on Lake Ivanhoe. It’s hard to keep repeating a mantra when you’re being entertained by 50 plus paddle boarding witches! In any event, I’m back at the running. And I’ll just keep dreaming of what next summer could hold. Mountains of the Moon in Uganda? Alaska? Rather than think about the current situation as an absence of a plan, I need to consider it a point of infinite possibility.

Mountain dreaming

Lost in Florida – Staring Down Charles Bronson

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So this is the first of my Lost in Florida series since the time of coronavirus. And yes, this particular adventure was designed by our friend S — he of the famous Tosohatchee trail hike where he didn’t bother looking at the reverse side of the map — which was in color and indicated that much of said trail was blue (meaning under water). For that adventure click on The Lost in Florida Series – The Tosohatchee Wilderness.

Now, in fairness, this time he checked both sides of the map and the 9 mile loop in the Charles H. Bronson State Forest (I kid you not about the name) showed not even a tinge of blue. But, what the map didn’t show was that days and days of rain had turned an otherwise well marked trail into canals worthy of Venice. (Apparently Charles H. Bronson was a Florida public official who worked in the department of agriculture.)

Now, when I say canal, I don’t mean that the water was nicely contained like a Netherlands water control situation. No, first you’d encounter just a little bit of a soggy section on a low part of the trail. Then the soggy section would get wetter and deeper until it overflowed its banks into a bayou of 20 or more feet of brown tannic water which you just prayed was not inhabited by snakes.

There were few choices. Try to find some high ground around the sides and risk the thorns and people traps formed by vines, tiptoe through said water hoping it wouldn’t crest the top of your hiking boots, or just tromp the entire thing saying damned if you do, damned if you don’t. After five hours of slogging through I took the third option.

The area surrounding the trail is very beautiful. Of course, we couldn’t see much of the trail itself since it was under water. J and I and our hiking companions in crime, M and S, started just before 10 am at the Joshua Trailhead. After hiking out a short (and dry) spur to the actual loop, we decided to go right. It turned out to be a good choice because the wettest parts were on that side of the loop and I’m not sure we could have conquered them at the end.

The canopy is high and deep. Creamy petals from small magnolia trees sprinkled the first part of the trail, for all the world as if for a wedding procession. Occasional meadows were covered in wildflowers – fields of perky yellow ones, vivid oranges mixed with ornate pinks, tall blooming yuccas like grapes, and purple thistles as high as my head.

Then the water would come. Slightly oily looking in some places, clear in others, but always with a brown tannic look that you could take as mysterious or menacing. At one point we did hear something that could have been a bear or a boar, and raised our voices accordingly.

Interspersed with the jungle were stands of Florida pines with little underbrush, along which were treeless prairies. The trail narrowed so there was barely room for a person to creep between the tall scrub on either side.

The final slog was not wet but unbelievably hot. It was 95 degrees. We had not brought enough water since we usually have too much and were down to our last sips by mile 9. By then the injury count was high. M had impressive scrapes after she encountered a vine trap apparently designed to capture people; I had a great bruise from clamboring over a fallen tree, combined with multiple bites from mosquitoes who were impervious to DEET; and J and S were both dehydrated.

Our pace was slow, and our survival skills would not have earned us an A in any Sierra Club challenge. Anytime you run out of water in 90 plus degree weather you know you’ve done something wrong. But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. We faced down Charles Bronson and won!

So it took a pandemic…

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I’ve been writing this blog for close to six years – which is an eternity in blog world. Can I win a prize, please?

And when all this started I had such grandiose dreams – I wrote about empty Orlando and a follow up; then I was going to write about a hike into the Florida wilderness – and took lots of photos but the post never emerged.

Is it the strange secrecy of working at least half the week in your own little private Idaho – with plenty of communication but all of it virtual? Is there some element of privacy I never experienced before that makes you dole out public viewings in a more abstemious fashion?

Who knows. The world appears to be changing and all I know is I want to see my children and my parents next month. If I need to maintain my semi hermit world to do that – at least for the sake of my parents – it’s worth it.

So, we now have a booking for a cabin (unclear about electricity) that’s a 2.5 mile steep hike up a mountain in NC for three days, followed by a beach week with – I hope – my parents, children, and significant others. Not exactly summits, but in these days of coronavirus I’ll take what I can get.

We were supposed to climb Katahdin in Maine in July. I even have the Baxter State Park permits. But before booking plane tickets I made the sensible decision to check Maine’s visitor rules and discovered we would be subject to a 14 day quarantine. Don’t think that will work.

I have absolutely no idea how that emoji appeared but I can’t erase it without deleting the last paragraph so I guess we are stuck with it. Cheers!

A Walker’s Guide to Empty Orlando

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It’s been only a few weeks since I last posted – about an adventurous trip to the back country of the Klondike in the Canaveral National Seashore. But – as I’m sure all of us feel – those few weeks have taken us on a journey on which none of us planned to venture. Global pandemic? What? Back in the halcyon days of February it seemed like a far off possibility. Not something where the global case count would rapidly reach six figures, speeding up at ever greater rates, and there’s a grim competition of which state is outdoing which for the highest number of cases. New York obviously wins, but there’s brisk competition for the runners up.

For whatever reason, the legal profession has been designated an essential service in Orlando, and while anyone who wants to work at home can do so, and our office is closed to non employees, there’s a stalwart little band of regulars who show up for at least part of each day, carefully observing a six foot distance from each other. In my management capacity I’ve actually threatened to get out a yardstick.

The Y has closed, as have all my other sources for group exercise activities. I’m discovering that yoga by oneself practiced with a video lacks the energy and community that I now realize is central to my practice. So, once this all started I decided that I should try to walk to and from work as frequently as humanly possible, in the hopes that our July trip to Katahdin will happen and I’ll be ready for it.

It’s an eerie feeling to roam the deserted streets of downtown. Mostly it is me and the homeless population, some mentally disturbed and some not. I don’t think the numbers of the homeless have increased – it’s just with no cars and no foot traffic they are more apparent. It appears no one else has decided walking to work is the way to keep sane in this current madhouse.

Then there are the construction workers who are completely exempt from Orlando’s shelter in place order. And every developer has apparently decided they can get way ahead without all those pesky people around. The construction guys have also clearly concluded that the six feet rule doesn’t apply to them. They are working arm to arm just as closely as before and crowd around the water coolers in the backs of the trucks.

Orlando is unseasonably hot right now, but that doesn’t seem to be making any difference to the virus, and it is to cool off next week. I’ve discovered new routes to walk to work, and know every single parking garage I can cut through, as well as shady little back streets that see little pedestrian traffic in the best of times. I frequently feel I’m starring in the opening scenes of an apocalyptic movie where there will be a flash forward to six months from now, with abandoned cars on the streets and weeds working their way through the cracks of unused streets, while small bands of people scavenge for their next meal.

Well, maybe not that bad. As I walk back home in the afternoon, multiple family groups are out enjoying the lake. I haven’t seen this many people outside and off of their phones for a very long time. And I have virtually connected with old friends who live far away – leading us to wonder why we never tried this before.

There’s swamps and there’s summits and there’s a lot of in between. Let’s just appreciate where we are now – with an appropriate six feet of distance between us!

Castaway on Cape Cavaveral National Seashore – Florida Hiking

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For years J and I have puzzled about the Klondike. No, not of Alaskan gold rush fame, but the mysteriously named strip of sand, dune, palmetto, and marsh that lies between the end of the roads at Playalinda Beach (parking area 13, where signs warn of nude sunbathing) and Apollo Beach (parking area 5, which I don’t believe has any similarly salacious signage although since I haven’t been there yet, I’m not sure).

It’s 13 miles between the two beaches. Some internet research had suggested there was actually a trail that veered off the beach, although the post from a year ago cryptically mentioned it “did not seem to be maintained” and was “not well-marked.” A call to the Visitors Center further confirmed that “no one is allowed back there” and whoever had been so adventuring was “doing something they weren’t supposed to.” Being law abiding citizens, we decided we would just stick to the beach, which seemed to be grudgingly accepted as permissible as long as we purchased our back country hiking permits.

The logistics of hiking straight through end to end seemed too daunting, at least for a first attempt. It would have taken two cars, with multiple drop offs and pickups. Thus, the plan was to hike half of the south to north route and turn back; next time we’ll hike the other half, north to south and then reverse; and theoretically, after that, we’ll figure out the logistics to do the whole thing.

Temperatures were in the low 70s, with a little chance of rain despite steely grey clouds, so we knew conditions should be good. Despite the signs promising nude sunbathing there was little to be found in the morning. The hike started off in some soft sand that hardened a bit as we got further away from the road. We soon passed the permit required sign, and the one lone person who had been ahead of us turned around and headed back toward civilization.

Not so us! We kept on going, along a medium wide strip of beach that narrowed to an alarming few feet and backed us up to the edge of the dunes at certain points. We could see points of land ahead, sheathed in sea spray, and had not clue what might be on the other sidet. And not a person around. Eerie is the word that comes to mind.

Glancing over the small dunes, edged with sea oats and palmettos, we could see the lagoon (what in North Carolina we would call the Sound) across a marshy area. But in some places the island itself narrowed, and I was conscious of being on a windswept strip of sand that one rogue wave could easily submerge.

As we continued on, the tide – I think we were at high tide and it turned as we were hiking – brought in a steady stream of human detritus. Full size plastic trash cans. A Gatorade bottle, still full. An air compressor with its power cord stretched out along the beach like a tail. And thousands of pieces of flaked plastic that blended into the white chipped scallop shells. So here we were, on a completely remote and uninhabited beach, yet surrounded by plastic.

Shells or plastic?

It was so bright that I couldn’t really see my Fitbit, except when I synced it to my phone, so we strictly adhered to our time estimates. The last thing we wanted was to be stuck behind the gates after the park closed. As we turned back, at approximately the half way mark, we could see our footprints, except for the spots where the waves had worn them away. There was something reassuring about knowing we’d already walked that way before.

We crushed through seashells, dodging sea suds blown all around us. On the way out, we had only seen pelicans. But the sun had now come out, and so had many small little seabirds, congregating at the edge of the water as though they were attending a convention.

Conventioneers?

Finally we started to see signs of life other than of the two legged and winged variety. I guess you could say it was a little Adam and Eve like, as the first person we saw, striding purposefully along in the surf, caused J to say, “does he not have clothes on?” Apparently the long promised nude sunbathers were now out in full force.

It was a monotonous hike (and a great workout), and it took some mental energy to keep on going (especially given the blisters I discovered I’d developed by the end). But when it’s monotonous – yet scary – you focus on the here and now. A lesson in mindfulness. And we’ve still got the other half to go.

Waiting for What Doesn’t Come or Thoughts on a Hurricane

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The Edge of Dorian

So we will take a break from the regularly scheduled programming – that is, the wrap of the Balkans trek – for some brief ruminations on hurricanes and circularity. No summits this time; this is life in the swamp in hurricane season.

Like everyone else in Florida I celebrated Labor Day weekend by obsessing over the weather as we waited for Hurricane Dorian (still not sure if that was meant to be a male or female Dorian) to come barreling across the Caribbean aimed straight at Florida. Unfortunately I also had to spend large portions of said weekend in a conference room for work, but that’s another story. And at least it served as a distraction from my hourly checks of the advisories from the hurricane center. Did you know that not only are there full advisories at 5 am, 11 am, 5 pm, and 11 pm, and some intermediate ones as well – but there is even an hourly “public advisory” on the official NHC website? When your safari search pages are keyed to nothing but weather sites you learn these things.

In any event, at a certain point we were informed that the hurricane was supposed to make a sharp right angle turn that would take if off course for Florida and hopefully shoot it out into the ocean. J and I did a modicum of hurricane preparation – mostly moving the porch furniture, cleaning out half of the garage so one car could fit, and taking the other off to a safe parking facility. Our neighbors, however, boarded up all their windows well before any possible hurricane arrival and must have been living in what could only be described as a dungeon for almost a week.

In the meantime we waited. And we waited. And we waited on some more for that sharp right turn.

As everyone knows by now, Dorian unfortunately decided to take a rest stop over the Bahamas, wreaking utter devastation. I must admit I feel survivors’ guilt. Florida was so much better equipped to handle this storm it seems unconscionable that Dorian selected the Bahamas instead, making Bahamas’ loss Florida’s gain….but it certainly seems that’s what happened.

Because eventually the right hand turn came. Many offices (not mine!) were risking nothing and closed on Tuesday…which ended up being a fairly decent day with only a couple of rain showers. Ironically most offices re-opened on Wednesday- despite the fact that the weather was worse – although nothing that even compared to a summer thunderstorm in Florida with straightline winds.

By then I had programmed my body to wake up at 2 am and 5 am to make sure I was on top of the latest briefings. Based on Facebook traffic I don’t think I was the only one doing just that.

Finally Thursday dawned and it was just another day. I realized I’d lost about an entire week of news and had actually managed to stop checking Twitter to see just what horrors were being posted by our Tweeter-in-chief. And I had no idea what was happening with Brexit. The news blackout was distinctly refreshing.

Driving off to work on Thursday – here’s the circularity part – I ran into a road closure right around the lake. Now you’ve probably heard me complain about the never ending drainage project that has been going on for a year, large parts of it in front of my house. But they had started to the right of our house and were moving left and it finally looked as though they were almost done. But now they were BACK on the right, albeit a little further down. Why? Why wouldn’t you start at the beginning and go one direction? And now we get more road closures? Try explaining them to an Uber driver.

So, we seem to be back to square one on drainage. Hopefully they won’t decide they are going to redo all that they did for the sake of continuing in that lefterly direction. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess I’m glad life has circled back to its regular plodding routine. We should all be so lucky. Let’s all give some money to the Bahamas.

Post Dorian from the Y parking lot

Me, Myself, I on 20 Miles of the West Orange Trail

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FromSwamptoSummit sums up the West Orange Trail. You start in a swamp of poverty, journey through the foothills of mid-income housing developments, and ultimately arrive at McMansions that “start in the $800s.” As we prepare for our upcoming Balkans trek I wonder if there will be a similar journey, albeit in the wilds of the former Yugoslavia.

I like to prepare for a big trek by hiking 20 miles in one fell swoop. If you can walk 20, you should be able to do anything, right? But this time, for various reasons, my husband and erstwhile hiking companion J couldn’t make it. So there was no choice but to go for it on my own.

This is probably the fourth or so time I’ve done the entire trail  and it was familiar enough to me that it felt eerily like coming home in some ways. The Buddhist temple was just where I remembered it; the huge log house with the extensive grounds; the farm animals outside West Orange High.

But doing it solo caused more observation, here and there. I did the first 10 miles with barely a look at my phone, except to take photos. Sights?

  • The number of homeless people I encountered just outside of Apopka. Hiking on your own you are cautious about strangers. An elderly bearded man started to approach, clearly preparing to talk. “Ma’am, can you tell me what day it is?” “Saturday.” “Thank you.”
  • A little later I saw another man in the distance dart off the trail into the woods. As I reached his exit point, I could see a path worn into the woods, strewn with wrappers and other trash. It looked for all the world like a bread crumb trail left by Hansel and Gretal.  Who knew what was at the far end.

 

  • And a trip back in time. It was only in the mid 80s, but grey and humid. Outside one of the modest houses that line the area I think of as “church country” as there are so many of them sat two men and a woman on aluminum folding chairs. The men were wearing short sleeved button up shirts. One wore a tie; he was clearly the visitor. The woman was wearing a skirt and pouring drinks from a pitcher. I bet she even had on stockings. I expected the 1940s station wagon to show up any moment.

I took a 30 minute lunch break in the shade of an overpass at the 10 mile mark. I’d been watching  a very large tortoise slowly move along the trail but fortunately my pace was faster. At the bench I spread out, bandaged my feet again, changed from heavy weight to light weight boots, ate half a sandwich, and drank a lot of water.

A grey haired fellow on a racing bike sat down next to me and complimented my hiking poles (I think they were the only pair of hiking poles on the trail that day and they made all the difference). I apologized for hogging most of the bench with my various and sundry items.  He was wearing a US Postal team racing shirt. It turned out he had just been hiking in Death Valley and was riding 50 miles that day. Later on I encountered him going the other direction.

The last ten miles I gave up on my phone ban. I looked at social media and read WordPress blogs. And I also listened to at least three of the final episodes of Serial – Season 1. I can tell you anything about Anand Syed you want to know.

That internet blitz matched the world I was now walking into – housing developments that had mushroomed in the last year, advertised on huge billboards promising the latest in lifestyle pleasure.

At mile 15 I reached Winter Garden. The rain started to pour down and I sheltered in the bandstand, put my rain cover on my pack, and dug out my raincoat. After a few minutes it cleared and I was on the last stretch.

The final five miles, from Winter Garden  to Killarney, is quite beautiful. You pass through oak forests, meadows, and some small towns. Houses range from charming little cottages just outside Winter Garden to newly built mansions overlooking the surrounding lakes. There’s always something to look at. And I try not to focus on the history of racism that exists in some of those small towns. Just look up the 1920 Ocoee Massacre.

The last mile is always the hardest. But I pushed through and J was there waiting. It was quite a solo journey – under 20 minutes a mile the entire way. I think I’m ready for the Balkans.

The Lost Series – Palm Bluff Conservation Area, Florida

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This post was supposed to be the tale of my 20 mile solo hike last Saturday on the West Orange Trail. But it’s July 4 and instead I thought I’d celebrate by a quick addition to the “lost” series. It’s timely because this hike literally only finished about three hours ago!

Fellow hiker and friend S has apparently developed a new hobby – finding the most unknown hiking trails in Central Florida. Today he thought we should all recognize Independence Day by asserting ours and venturing off into the wilds of Volusia County. He and M and their daughter B, all of whom will be leaving with us in two weeks for our Balkan adventure, insisted we get to their house at the ungodly hour of 8:15 am, to drive to the trailhead as heat was a concern. Boy, was it.

When we arrived at the trail head there were only two other cars in the wide flat meadow. One must have belonged to the two mountain bikers we saw early in the hike – they were the only other humans we saw on the trail. Two people were standing by the other car, neither of whom looked as though they had ability or desire to set off on an 8 mile hike. When we finally finished, ours was the only car in that meadow. The fact the grass was long and hadn’t been mashed down should have given us a clue we weren’t exactly on an Everest like climb. (Note – rather remarkable that Everest has become synonymous with crowded trails.)

Anyway, the first part was fine. Flat, grassy, and a number of stiles to go through with stringent warnings to shut gates as “cattle were in pasture.” We were basically circumnavigating a broad swath of power lines – I was hoping walking under them might give us a jolt of energy but it didn’t.

Anyway, as we chatted and walked, we found ourselves walking by a farmhouse, together with quite a few cows. We’d been making fun of how many trail blazes there were on what was really a well-marked fire road when we realized we hadn’t seen any of said red blazes for quite a while. M, pointing out she once had been a professional map reader in her brief career as a fire watch, was sure we’d missed a turn. S, equally confident in his navigation skills, felt sure we were going in the right direction. J and I, aware of our directional challenges, mostly stayed quiet. And B pointed out that there was now absolutely no shade, the sun had come out, the heat index was over 100, and it was so humid we were all leaving puddles of sweat behind us.

It turned out all of the above were true. After slogging on another half mile or so we finally re-encountered the trail, apparently having wandered off through someone’s cow pastures and added an extra mile or so to the trek. The universe had not taken kindly to our jokes at the expense of those who had marked the trail so well (but really – every 100 yards or so? And sometimes with poles that looked like flashers?)!

The remainder of the trail was truly brutal. Yes, it was flat, and pines lined each side, but the Florida sun was beating down with its most Florida like intensity.

After close to 4 hours, we reached our car, which was looking very lonely as it sat isolated in the meadow.

Beers and burgers were up next. Fortunately we were seated far away from anyone else in the restaurant which certainly was a blessing to those around us, given our rather fragrant condition. But, the Balkans approach, and I figure if we can get through this swamp we ought to be ready for those summits!