So, the Florida Trail….before we started we spent four days in crowded civilization called South Florida. Having exited the state of Florida a year ago to hike the AT it was going to be fun to see some old sights and see friends. Our first stop was to Bass Pro Shop to purchase backpacker meals, fuel and some other essentials as well as to eat at the really yummy Islamorada Fish House for lunch. After lunch we drove an hour south to see our friend Christine who was leisurely working that afternoon. We chatted for a good while about all sorts of things from hiking to local geocaching gossip before…

We are home in Texas. We finished the Florida trail on Thursday around lunch time. It was very anti-climactic. There was no wooden sign, no three hour-4K foot climb, just the last blaze painted on a piece of wood and a three sided display board about the Florida Trail. Nothing to say we were done. We stood at the edge of the parking lot looking for a stray blaze, seeing if perhaps it would take us to the top of the Fort or maybe the water, but when I looked at the little paper on the board that outlined the mileage for the section it stated that mile 0.0 was…

So many things to write about. I blog in my head often but I never get around to writing it, being at a computer once every two weeks! A few days ago we hit 3,000 miles of hiking this year. We’ll wrap up the trail in about 11 days, or 220 miles left for the year. Shortly after it will be a year since we started this crazy hiking adventure on Springer Mountain. How can it be a year already? Since White Springs we have had beautiful weather. It’s supposed to stay nice until the end of the week and then it looks like a few rain days may be…

Rain. *bleeping* rain. So, yesterday was a day reminiscent of the day we stayed under the bridge with Cubbie and Dilly Dally in Pennsylvania. Cold, cold, miserable rain. There are practically no shelters on this trail, however there are a couple in this section and thankfully we ended up at one yesterday for lunch where we could actually eat lunch instead of stopping for five minutes to shove a few bars down our throat and continuing on with our heads down. If we hadn’t been close to town it would’ve been a place we’d of holed up in for the day. And then we white blazed into down. That’s kinda…

We are one month in and half way done with the Florida Trail. We haven’t seen the sun since Tuesday evening. Blech. This is supposed to be the Sunshine State, but I think we are too close to Georgia. Tomorrow we shall cross under I-10 and in a few days cross under I-75 and then I think we go under I-10 again at some point as we walk west towards Pensacola. In the passed week since we left suburban Orlando we finally entered the forest again. We got into Seminole State Forest before lunch last Friday and saw a controlled burn in the distance. Eventually the trail almost came next…

So after doing our slackpacking the other day we did an easy 13-14 mile day on Tuesday because we thought it was going to start storming sometime after lunch. We’d stopped at an RV resort to fill up our water before walking three more miles to the campsite which we arrived to at 1pm. Cloudy, maybe a sprinkle, but no thunder in ‘sight’. We ho-hummed for the next four hours until it really did decide to rain, right at hiker bedtime, 6pm. Damn, could’ve put in six more miles and stayed at our Trail Angel’s house again. Oh well, instead we hung out at the campsite in Seminole Ranches. After…

Hello! I am alive! We are in Titusville at a Trail Angel’s house for the night. He’d contacted us prior to our hike about our propsects of doing the east side of Lake Okeechobee and told us they were doing work and had been kicked off recently. Then he said when we got to the Christmas area to give him a call and we could get a shower and laundry done. We gave him a call last night to tell him we thought we’d be there Tuesday afternoon but he said he’d meet us where we started a 24 mile roadwalk today at noon. So, we ended up slackpacking some…

I talked to Misti today. Here is a rundown of what has been going on… – They made it to Clewiston on Friday. – Lots of road walking. Walking on levees and through burning cane fields. Its been pretty boring since leaving Big Cypress. – Had a trail angel pick them up today and take them to the grocery store to pick up food for the next week. – It’ll be about about 10 days until they will be anywhere to access a computer and post something themselves. – Wildlife seen: osprey, snail kite, white pelican, eastern diamondback, cottonmouth, raccoon, armadillo. That’s about it. Misti and Chris seemed to be…

Hello all! My name is Kathy and Misti has me doing a little “guest blogging” for her now that they’ve hit the trail. My hubby Randy and I just dropped Chris and Misti at the Florida Trail on Loop Road this morning. They stayed with us a few days this week before this trail adventure. It was nice seeing them in what amazingly enough has been almost a year since they left South Florida. Chris got out to Fakahatchee one day while Misti and I went “thrifting” all over town. We hit up a few of my favorite local shops and of course Misti did lots of window shopping as…

Well, we’re here in Fort Lauderdale and well, aside from 595 having an insane amount of construction, Florida is the same. It’s warm in January, all the invasive species are still out and about (Brazilian pepper, melaleuca, Australian pines, iguanas, monk parakeets) and all of the tropical plants make me want to garden like crazy. We drove down to Miami to visit our friend Christine and while driving down Krome Avenue I wanted to stop in at every nursery and buy orchids. We did stop in at one of our favorites and poked around at all the beautiful vandas. Mmmmm, orchids! My only sadness is that it isn’t mango, lychee…