Date: 2005-12-25
To: Florida Trail
Miles today: 9.7

It's Christmas day, my family is on the other side of the ocean and I can go out hiking for a couple of days. After a Greyhound trip visiting friends out west, in the middle, and on the east coast of the country I ended up in Florida visiting UG (AT05). Thankfully a 7 hour plane ride cost only $20 more than a 20+ hour Greyhound trip. And I must say that after having endured three 15+ hour bus rides and spending 6 hours at the Columbus (Ohio) Greyhound station (first bus was overbooked, second bus cancelled, third bus got me to my final destination at 1:40am) I really didn't want to deal with Greyhound for awhile. So I flew. To Florida. Which has the Florida Trail. And since I'm here for seven days I had some time to kill and decided to explore this Florida Trail a bit.I got The Florida Trail official guidebook from the Deltona library and UG told me that Ocala National Forest is pretty and close by. So I'm hiking the part (segment 16) that goes through there. It's about 47 miles. A rather short stretch for four days but segment 17(which I assumed continued north of segment 16) was all road walk. Now, I just found out that it's segment 22 that follows 16 and that's actually a pretty stretch too. I already made arrangements to be picked up at the end of this segment so I'll just hike real short days and read books like I did in Nepal, or maybe I'll even write some more journal entries ; ).I'll have to read the intro of this guide book on what the logic of their segment order is. I'll get back to you on that. It intrigues me tremendously.Late this morning UG dropped me off at the Clearwater Lake trailhead. Eventhough it was still .3 miles to the actual trail, a big Florida Trail sign greeted me. UG commented that it was prettier than the AT sign and took a picture of me next to it. I never thought I would set foot on this trail since it's rumored to be flat and swampy. Don't get me wrong, I like flat but only when it's accompanied by views and that's usually not the case. I'm looking forward to this little hike though. Speaking of 'though' at the end of a sentence, Anchor (of the Troll family AT05) told me that it's incorrect to use it there. Speaking of Anchor, she would do really badly on this trail. It is marked by orange blazes and Troll and I remember well how she would miss the bright orange DOC signs in NH. She claims they don't stand out. Blaze orange... doesn't stand out. You gotta love Anchor.Anyway, I followed the little blue blaze to the orange blazes and was on my way. I walked under tall pines and oaks, skirted flatwoods ponds fringed with saw palmettos, boardwalked through swampy hydric hammocks, with cabbage palms and large ferns (yes, I'm paraphrasing the guidebook, like I'd know the names of all that stuff).I spend quite some time taking pictures of the cabbage palms (I guess that's what they were) and saw a weird insect with a smaller weird insect on it's back. It looked like some sort of grasshopper with black and green stripes. The subtle changes in landscape were very welcome. I was surprised at the diversity of trees and shrubs. It was still early when I got to the Alexander Springs recreation area but I'd done enough distance for the day and I was loking forward to reading my book.The camping situation is a little problematic this time of year. That is, it's hunting season and during hunting season you have to camp at designated campsites. That wouldn't be such a problem if they had walk-in campsite fees for $5 or so. They have no such fee however and charge the full $17 (the guide stated $10). I find that ridiculous, have camped during hunting season (in different areas) before and don't want to spend over $50 for a four day backpacking trip. I told the lady at the kiosk that I couldn't afford to pay that much and she replied that they take credit cards. Very funny. I filled up my water and walked back into the woods hoping they wouldn't follow me and fine me for stealth camping. Of course I had hoped that there wouldn't be any rangers on Christmas Day and that I could've camped for free at the campground. I know, I'm horrible...My illegal campsite is right next to the turn-off sign to the blue blaze to Alexander Springs and it's quite nice. I hear no gunshots so think I'm rather safe.