This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields.

I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost for a century when another population was found elsewhere in the Strand. Chris and a group went down to this population about three years ago and let me tell you—it is in the boonies. The tram we took used to be clear-ish apparently, but not this time around. We waded through ferns up to our shoulders and ducked under, over and around Brazilian pepper bushes. Two + miles of that. And the water was still fairly high out there for this time of year, not to mention cold!

These are the little plants. They grow on floating logs in the water or in cypress knees in some areas.

This is my favorite shot. I used the reverse lens technique on my 18-55mm lens.

The flowers are very tiny; the whole plant is not but a few inches tall. They are very non-descript if you walked by them in their non-blooming state.

We didn’t see any animals other than a cottonmouth that swam in this area that Chris is at in the photo. It came out of nowhere, but I heard it splash and saw it go over the log and off into the woods. Very creepy! Oh, and a smaller cottonmouth, very tiny baby that wasn’t going to move because it was too cold. But other than that, only bear scat and nothing else!

Brazilian pepper is one of the worst plants in the world. Ok, in Florida. I’m sure in Brazil it is lauded as beautiful and awesome. But, not here. However, I was eyeing a seed pod on a strap leaf fern and thought that it looked pretty cool.

And so I thought this might be the only nice way I would enjoy a Brazilian pepper.

When we left we caught Mike Owen and Karen Relish and a few other Fakahatchee explorers in the park office. It was good to chat with them since it would be the last time to see them in awhile. There was another person there who took a group photo of us but I don’t remember his name, but I do know his friend read my blog at one point. If you are reading this—send me an email! I’d love to have a copy of that photo!

So, goodbye Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I’ll miss you…but not your mosquitoes.

After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details…

Lichen holding on…

I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it!

Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set.

I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it!

A few things:
-Does anyone else have horrible spam comment issues with Wordpress? I NEVER had this problem with Haloscan (which is now closing its doors, so go download all of your comments now!), but I get at least one a day if not more and it is usually on the same post. I don’t want to moderate every comment but this is getting ridiculous!

-We now have a Trail Journal page. It has an RSS button as well. I am planning on copying and pasting on each. I did three posts, repeats of what was on here in order to get the journal listed on TJ, and you can do HTML so it will be easy to c&p. But, TJ has a gear section and we are slowly adding our gear to it. I will let you know when we’ve got it finished and you can have a gander at it.

-We went to Little Slough today to check on the ghost orchids and make it a farewell trip. The ghosts did much better than we thought. A few were already on their way out from a dry spring last year, but only a few had some yellowing on their roots. One even already has a spike! So, things are good there. I’ll bring photos of those later this week. It was a bit bittersweet leaving it, but we have some friends who will keep a good eye on it.

I could blame Eliana. After all it was practically this time last year when we went to Payne’s Prairie and met up with them after their epic adventure across North America.

She gave me a few magazines to read on the way home and one of them was Backpacker. I didn’t read it until a few days later, but inside was an article on the Appalachian Trail. It took all of finishing the article for me to develop a plan. When Chris got home from work I brought up my great idea: Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail. He looked at me with a quizzical brow (ok, it was more like, whaatttt?) but we went to dinner and decided it was do-able. The biggest thing was coming up with the money to do it.

We took a few days to sit down and read about it. A magazine article wasn’t going to cut it. We scoured the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website, read Trail Journals and came up with a game plan: save a bunch of money and start doing a lot of hiking. We broke the news to our parents the following weekend and I think they were pretty much stunned. I think they thought we were insane.

Sure, we were giving up jobs that we’d gotten comfortable in. But, he’s 30, I’m going to turn 30 on the trail, we have no real responsibilities other than the cats (which are joining their cousins at my parents house for a few months), no mortgage, no children. We finally reached a point where we had some ability to use our money instead of scrimping and saving and paying off bills. It was now or waiting until we were 60 and our kids went to college. Sure, there are the brave souls who travel the world with their children and take them hiking on all sorts of adventures, but I don’t think I have the money or the patience for that.

Throughout the summer we slowly bought new and better gear. We couldn’t walk in our hand-me-down Kelty external frame pack—well, we could, but the name of the game is light-weight. We tested out different things, and slowly bought everything we would need. We won’t be the lightest pair on the trail, but we’ll be doing 25-30lbs starting out of town each time. Summer time should get us down to 20-25 lbs possibly. The ultra-light hikers do 10-15lbs and sometimes even less than that! But, we choose some comforts over ultra light packing.

So, where does that leave us at present? Well, packing. And selling our plants and a lot of our furniture. We had a plant sale back in November and are having another one tomorrow. It is hard to be getting rid of a lot of them, but I know we can start over again later, especially when we have a house that they can go in the ground. Part of my emotional week from hell last week (the week Ashleigh was born) was also because I gave my boss my four week notice. After nearly six years on the job it was difficult to part ways. That is another post later on, a post about our time in Florida.

We’ve quit our jobs and we have two weeks until we hit the road west to Texas. We’ll stay in Texas for three weeks or so and start probably the second week of March on the AT. We’re bouncing back and forth between my parents and Chris’ mom’s house and trying to get some hiking in while we are there. Texas actually has some hills so that will be good training as opposed to flat Florida.

Where we will end up after the trail is up in the air at the moment, but it will be more than likely Texas. But, like South Texas or somewhere like that. Not Houston. Been there, done that. And we’ll find jobs again, or maybe we’ll actually do something with our photography and try to get something off the ground in that aspect. Who knows? The trail is going to help us out a bit on that part.

As for the trail, here is a brief run-down of what to expect here on the blog:

-I’ll be posting when I get to town, at libraries or hostels, but that will be every 3-5 days and then who really knows if I’ll have the time or not. We’ve decided not to carry an iphone or Blackberry, so we’ll be free from the ‘net a bit.

-When I do post I’ll try to break it down into several posts so that you are entertained. Photos, lots of photos. And videos.

-We are sleeping in a tent. For six months. There are shelters every 8-12 miles, but especially at the beginning they tend to get very crowded. And there are mice. And they run over your face. The tent sounds nicer, now, right?

-It’s going to be hard. There will be up and down days, just like in real life. The trail is a lot of physical work, but it is mostly mental. It rains a lot, it’ll snow, there will be bears. Things will get to you. You just have to let it go and take it one day at a time. You can’t hike 2,178 miles in a day. You do 10 miles to start and work your way up to 20 mile days in Virginia and the more flat states and go from there.

-I’m going to smell. WOO! I’m trying to convince Chris to grow a beard out. Maybe get some shaggy hair going. I wonder if I can grow my leg hair out long enough to braid? haha, I will be taking a razor.

-Food…whatever is light and packs the most calories. This isn’t a time for dieting. We’ll be eating a lot and sometimes we’ll be running a deficit, no matter how much junk we can pack in at town. This is great…I need to lose 20 lbs! We’ll be supplementing with dehydrated meals that we’ve bought online, Mountain House is one of the brands, but we’ll also be eating a lot of sealed chicken and salmon with those Lipton/Knorr rice and noodle packs. And ramen noodles. Dried fruits…that sort of thing.

-We adopt trail names on the trail. Gone are Misti and Chris. I’m going to be Ridley, I think…Chris hasn’t decided yet. Most people let someone on the trail pick the name.

-Really, I can’t cover it all here, but if you have questions, post them and I’ll do a FAQ post.

-Some of my favorite blogs that I’ve read: Postcard (a 2010 hiker), All Right and Half Left (another 2010 hikers and from Florida), Wags (2009 hiker and excellent journal), Ben & Lauren’s 2007 Journal (loved this one because it was a couple.), Joe Liles 2009 journal.

2,178 long miles up the Eastern seaboard….

It all started at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park in January 2007!

This weekend, like last year, we went on a backpacking trip. This year we started off at the Hickory Hammock Florida Trail trail head on U.S. 98 between Sebring and Bassinger with the intentions of just walking north until we felt like turning around to come home.

We got a late start on Friday after sleeping in a bit and then driving the two hours north. Before we left we checked the weather and weren’t too pleased with the forecast—rain and then a cold front right behind it. It didn’t start raining until we entered Lake Placid at nearly lunch time. We took some back roads to get to the trail head and then we realized there wasn’t much in the way of food open on New Years Day out in the boondocks. Finally, after driving around for nearly an hour we drove into Sebring and found the Sebring Diner open and hoppin’! We were in luck, they had black eyed peas! We were having a minor dilemma of trying to manage to eat black eyed peas on NYD, though I know we didn’t do that last year.

With a full stomach we made it to the trail head around 1pm; the rain had mostly stopped. We ran into a small group of Florida Trail Association hikers doing a short out and back of six to eight miles and they warned us of the cold weather to come.

At two miles we came across the Hickory Hammock campsite, a beautiful site underneath old live oaks. We stopped for a short snack and pee break and we were on our way. Shortly after we left we passed a hiker and his dog, said a quick hello and we mosied on down the way.

At 4 miles we came across an equestrian campground complete with decent port o potties and non-potable water (you can treat it), we then kept meandering north along the trail. About a mile north we entered the most boring part of the journey. I wouldn’t say it is entirely worthless, but it wasn’t necessarily pleasant. The Montesdeoca Ranch borders the Florida Trail and you have to walk along the fence line for about three to four miles. The area is mowed but the grass is made up of clumps of smut grass and it gets really old trying to walk over the clumps. Also, directly to the east is the Kissimmee River, which can sometimes flood the trail. Luckily, we didn’t have any flooding problems!

;

The good part about this section was the amount of wading birds we saw. Sandhill cranes can be heard a good distance away and we caught a few mating dances from afar. A bald eagle flew over us as did a a couple of caracara.

About three quarters of the way up the fence line we were noticing dark clouds in the distance, getting worried that we’d have to put our rain jackets on. Sure enough we saw the rain in the distance, grabbed our jackets just in time to have the rain come down followed by a gust of wind that knocked the temperature down about 15 degrees. Brrrr! We were afraid the front was going to take its time to blow through, but we didn’t have to wait too long for the wind to die down a bit.

It was nearing sunset when we made it to Mosquito Hammock, but the sky had cleared up and we had a beautiful sunset, albeit cold! We kept toasty at night we our new 15* bags—so warm I didn’t want to get out in the morning!

We kept heading north towards the Avon Park Air Force Range, which can be closed to hikers if they are doing maneuvers. About two miles north of Mosquito Hammock is where you run into the range, you have to climb over a stile to get across the fence and there is a board up showing a map, paperwork to fill out and a sign saying the dates of closures and openings. It was open so we kept going north!

The oaks in this area were gorgeous! Ancient oaks covered in Spanish moss make for some dramatic shots! Too bad we didn’t have our good cameras.

We stopped at Hicks Slough campground about three miles or so into the park and took a long lunch, sunning ourselves with a nice cat nap.

Another stile we had to cross in the range.

We stopped at an old orange grove on the way back to look at some rotting oak logs and to snack on some oranges…

I’m employing the Eliana method for eating oranges—very good, you should try it!

I forgot to mention that we saw a barred owl on our way up to Avon Park. We heard many others in the early morning and late evening, too.

We were almost back to Mosquito Hammock for the evening when I spotted a dog. Up in a tree was its owner, Russell. Chris was a few yards ahead of me when I heard Russell ask Chris if he knew a geocacher friend of ours. Once I got up to the tree I recognized the guy as the one we’d seen the day before but also as someone we’d briefly met at Cacheapalooza a few weeks ago. We both had the mutual friend of another guy named Chris, who hiked with us for a day on our Ocean to Lake segment of the Florida Trail over Thanksgiving. Russell was also staying at Mosquito Hammock as was his dog Hickory. Hickory is a trail do for sure—bounding with energy! Poor pup had a ton of Caesar weed in his fur…I bet that will be a pain to get out!

We woke up this morning to temps of 35* and got on the trail to head back to the car. Russell hiked with us until Bluff Hammock parking lot which is 1.6 miles from Mosquito Hammock and we kept going the rest of the way back to our car.

I would recommend this hike for anyone who is interested in old Florida. It is peaceful, beautiful and a part of Florida you just don’t see that often.

And now I’m enjoying some good old fashioned comfort food—Rotel. mmmmmmm! Faux cheesey goodness!

This week: Cayo Costa State Park, Sanibel Sunsets, New Years Eve Sunset and failed moon rise (@%^$ clouds!), and whatever else you feel like hearing from me!

Oh yeah, my friend Meghan is working on a blog/website…check it out here!

And a second oh yeah….my dad asked me today if I took my computer camping so I could post. Nope…it’s a wonderful little object in Wordpress that allows you to schedule posts! I can now take one day and write several posts up for the next few days—isn’t that awesome??? I’m all for more free time.

And for the third OH YEAH—-we saw a bobcat this morning!! A very big score!

When we left Marc and Eliana’s house on Friday night we decided we’d meet them at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary at 7am on Saturday morning. From our house it is about an hour and a half drive and from theirs, add at least another forty-five minutes.

We weren’t exactly bright eyed and bushy-tailed when we got there. It was early.

Chris and I arrived first and hit the boardwalk after I downed the majority of my coffee since disposable materials aren’t allowed on the boardwalk. He set out for the cypress dome and I wanted to see what I could come up with in the fog that had rolled in across the open prairie. I wasn’t too successful with the fog but I did get some shots that I enjoyed.

Marc and Eliana are birders, something which Chris and I aren’t very good at. Well, we aren’t good at the little birds like finches, warblers and the like. They are pretty good at noticing the calls and it helps that their iphone has a spiffy app for bird calls so they can double check to see what bird it is. I think we racked up a bit of knowledge that day!

We saw a minute amount of wildlife, mostly at the first half of the trail. Eliana and I spotted two Big Cypress fox squirrels in some cypress trees, chewing on the cypress balls. I haven’t seen very many of these squirrels—they’ve been replaced by the more common grey squirrel. They were fun to watch for awhile and I know Chris got a few good photos. As we were going up to tell Marc and Chris about the squirrels they told us about a very docile red shouldered hawk that was being kind enough to sit still for photos. We switched places and started taking photos of the hawk.

This is the area where the super ghost orchid is located. Since it is out of the blooming season we had a bit of a time trying to point out just where it was off in the distance.

I think this is where Marc was looking for the yellow crowned night heron. A volunteer had set up a scope at the pond to let visitors check out the birds. This time of year is peak birding season here in Florida, when all of the migratory birds head south to stay cozy for the winter.

Reflection in the duckweed…

Stay tuned for the rest of the trip….

Does anyone have any good podcast recommendations? I’m looking for some podcasts that are free but of a high caliber. It can be gardening, outdoors, crafts, photography, well, just about anything that you can tell that is of interest to me. Send it my way!

Rarely do we get blessed with such great clouds. The strong wind on Saturday brought rippling effects to the clouds and the sunset for our hike made a beautiful ending to the day.

Which one do you like best?

Ahh, it is so nice to be writing again! My brother has me up and running enough to post, but we still have to work out the widgets (ie: the side archives and categories) and I’ve put everything up until this past week in the archives up there at the top. I’ll eventually re-work my banner, but until then this is what I’ve got. I will also try and fix the font size and color; I already tried to change the visited link color but it hasn’t worked yet.

On Saturday, a day after my dad sat indoors while it poured the entire day and Chris and I had to work, we got outside to stretch our legs and hit Jonathan Dickinson State Park. I know, it seems like we go up there all the time, but we like it. Only this time we didn’t see any animals, just a ton of prints in the wet sand—coyotes, pigs, deer, raccoon, crawfish.

We had a freak two days of rain, heavy downpours and localized flooding. These trails were dry three weeks ago and were now puddled. Dad forgot to bring his hiking boots so he had to carefully traverse the sides of the trail.

We stopped at Kitching Creek for a break and I tried to snap some shots of Dad and while he was talking about how I should get the shine of his bald spot I noticed Chris in the background trying to take a photo, too.

The wind is hard on my ears—sensitive ears to just about any kind of cool wind. So, while I warmed up after some walking, the wind started bothering my ears. Which is why it seems odd to wear that buff in mild Florida, but that’s why.

We went to the old steam engine we found a few weeks ago to find that the area had been burned by a controlled burn. The place was scorched with burn marks up the sides of the pine trees and the palmettos ghostly with their charred trunks sticking up. I think I’ve read that the growth rate for these plants is 1′ per 25 years! So, if you see long trunks, know that those plants can be several centuries old!

A few weeks ago on Flickr I saw someone post a photo that they panned the camera with, creating a painting of sorts with the photo. It was so cool that I remembered it Saturday and tried it myself. I had to turn my f-stop up to I think 22 which was the highest it goes on for ISO 100 and that lens I had, then lowered it to a slow shutter speed to blur upon movement. I had to test it a few times before I learned a quickly flick up was all I needed.

I tried it again in the burn zone and it looks pretty awesome, I think!

Dad had me get a photo of him on the Florida Trail, or a section of it at least!

It was a great outing with a day that ended at a steak restaurant filling ourselves from the caloric deficit of the day and watching the Cowboys beat the Saints!