I couldn't resist! I just had to go back to hike and explore more of The Lake Eaton Trails in the Ocala National Forest. I recorded this episode of The Florida Trailblazer Podcast to reflect upon and share a little bit of my experiences there while hiking. I hope you enjoy and get inspired to go out and explore this place or a place nearby you!
Recently I had an opportunity to go spend a little time in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia and had the chance to go hiking and exploring in this vast mountain wilderness. A Very different experience than hiking in the Florida wilderness that is for sure! The first thing you need to get used to is the elevation and terrain changes. On the mountain trails it seems like you are either traveling up or down and not really much consistent level hiking. The miles feel longer on the mountain trails. For example, you may hike 5 miles up a mountain but that would feel like a 10 mile hike in Florida simply because the elevation difference in my opinion.
When you hike in the mountain wilderness here you begin to feel an overwhelming appreciation for the vast wilderness. For instance, some of the trails I hiked you could stand and look off a ledge from 4,000 feet up and see the valleys and mountains below. You really feel small and insignificant up there! It just is another perspective that I never get to really experience while hiking in Florida. Think of it as you being able to go down from space onto Earth, it is sort of the same feeling for me when I got to look out over this amazing mountain wilderness.
The next experience I enjoyed was the spectacular geology of the trails.
I mentioned the elevation changes on the trails that was nice yet challenging. I also noticed a lot of rock formations and big boulders along the trails. It truly demonstrates the power of nature and it had to take hundreds of thousands of years if not millions for some of these rock fomorations to form. Another observation I would like to point out is the distances of these trails, simply astounding how far they go through the mountains. Some trails I hiked on were 300 miles or longer! Of course I only got to hike a small fraction of that. Also the area was nearby where some of the Applachian Trail goes thru so that was also quite the experience to be able to hike on some of that historical trail!
Many of the trails here have waterfalls and ravines you can explore. In fact a lot of our hikes were based around areas with waterfalls. Where there is a waterfall is usually a trail to hike by it. Just an added bonus to the hikes! Getting to some of the trailheads is another experience on its own as well! A lot of them are accessible only via unpaved mountain roads. It was quite the adventure driving to some of the trails for miles up old mountain roads, scary at times but part of the adventure for sure!
I hope to have more opportunities to go back here, there is just so much to explore! You get a sense of wanting more and that feeling of missing out on something great when your gone. A place of enchantment etched into my memory though it is a place you can't forget.
I'll be writing more soon about some adventures that I had here and I also posted links to some photos and videos from this trip below. Enjoy!
The other day I found myself trying to figure out why exactly it is I enjoy hiking and exploring trails so much. I couldn't just narrow it down to one particular reason. It's a combination of many things. Exploring trails to see where they go, observing the different kinds of ecological systems and looking for wildlife are just a few reasons I can think of. I get excited about not knowing what I might see on the next hike. I cherish the photos and videos because through those mediums I can capture the moments forever.
I mentioned about looking for wildlife and I feel that the more we explore, we are rewarded with wildlife sightings. I've seen many kinds of animals on my adventures thus far and on a recent hike we saw a couple animals I thought I'd never get to see in wild Florida. We encountered a bison and wild horses out on Paynes Prairie State Preserve. It was ironic as well, because the park ranger mentioned that day that it's rare to see them on this vast open prairie. That they could be really spread out and so with that noted we still decided to go see this expansive prairie.
Wild Horses
Wild Horses
Plains Bison
We headed to the north end of the prairie where you can hike out onto an boardwalk around the prairie and it eventually leads to an observation deck. On the way to an observation deck you'll hike onto a wide multi-use trail that parallels and old drainage canal. Make sure to look closely down in these areas as you'll see alligators and birds dwelling in and by the waters. Well it was on the way back from observation tower that a bison emerged from the canal on the side of us! He came out 50 feet in front of us and into a suprised crowd of people. The bison mostly just stayed still starring at everyone and we were able to get some great photographs and videos! After about 10 minutes he eventually began to walk away into the surrounding prairie.
As we started walking again and as we approached the boardwalk we saw just to our left about 30 feet away some wild horses grazing! They stood their ground and everyone kept there distance. After some more photos and videos we headed back up to the trailhead. I'll never forget these moments we experienced at Paynes Prairie State Preserve. I posted some information about the park below, along with a link to web site if you want to read more up on it. I also posted a couple videos and photos of the bison and wild horses. When you go to the park, be sure to check out all it has to offer and enjoy the history!
Paynes Prairie itself is the largest geographical aspect of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park and consists of sixteen thousand acres of wet prairie, open water, and marsh. An additional area of six thousand acres of uplands including pine forests, fallow fields, ponds, and scrub that surround the Paynes Prairie basin boosts the total acreage to over twenty-two thousand in the preserve.
Paynes Prairie has a rich natural and cultural history that meanders back through time to eras long before humans appeared. The Paynes Prairie Basin was formed in pre-history by the washing away of limestone and the resulting resting of the land. The karst topography of the area has changed appearance little over the epochs, except for intervals of flooding. Paynes Prairie became home to many animals now extinct that included saber toothed cats, mammoths, mastodons, and one animal described as “a five-hundred pound beaver.” Humans followed the animals there at first around twelve thousand years ago, and then a steady stream of us followed including paleo and archaic Indians, the Cades People, the Seminole, and subsequently Europeans and Americans. The area played a bloody role in the settlement of Florida, as it was often the site of battles between the native peoples and others who wanted to make the grand, fruited region their home.
Take a walk in the woods with trailheads along and near major highways throughout Florida, the Florida Trail is within an hour's drive of most Florida residents and major tourist destinations.
In the early 1960s, Jim Kern, a Miami resident, visited the Appalachian Trail for a backpacking trip and came back to Florida with a burning desire to create a long-distance hiking trail in his own backyard. Founding the Florida Trail Association to pursue that goal, Kern rounded up like-minded Floridians and set to work. The Florida Trail’s first blaze was painted in the Ocala National Forest near Clearwater Lake in October 1966.
Today, Kern’s original dream of a 500-mile long distance hiking trail has grown to a federally designated National Scenic Trail more than 1,500 miles across the state of Florida, with volunteers from all over Florida seeing to its maintenance, expansion, protection, and promotion. Our goal is to establish a continuous wilderness corridor in which our footpath enables hikers to enjoy Florida’s natural habitats. After 40 years, more than 1,000 miles of “Florida’s Footpath Forever” lies within a protected corridor, connected by orange blazes along back roads where we have not yet been able to protect the corridor.
