Outdoors
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Flora, Fungi, and Fauna along the Florida Trail in Bronson State Forest
Let’s wrap up my Florida trip with this final post from my hike at Bronson State Forest. Sand Heath, Ceratiola ericoides Rosemary scrub habitats in Florida are considered to be a particularly endangered habitat. It thrives in sandy, old inland dune habitats and prefers to have a good burn once in a while—and well, you can imagine that sandy habitats and burning can be in short supply when people build homes right on top of and up next to the perfect habitat. A few sites with more information: Scrub Rosemary via UCF Arboretum, Endemic Florida Rosemary via Florida State Parks, and Rosemary scrub via Florida Hikes. Deer Moss, Cladonia evansii…
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Raptor Leftovers
Every now and then a hike gets you a glimpse of something wild and interesting. In some areas maybe you get to encounter a large mammal—a bear, maybe a panther or bobcat. Sometimes you just get really cool animal interactions like the time we watched a bald eagle steal a fish from an osprey on the last day of our Florida Trail thru-hike. Occasionally you come across the weirder but still interesting animal presence such as this dead opossum we found on a hike at Huntsville State Park over the weekend. Since we travel at a 5.5 year old’s pace these days we had been stopping and slowing down, and…
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Silent Sunday | Trout Lillies
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A Hike in the Chuluota Wilderness | Florida Trail
On the Sunday of the short weekend in Florida, I went on a hike with Sandra of Florida Hikes and Kate Dolamore, an artist friend in central Florida I’ve gotten to know the last couple of years. I wanted to hike on a section of the Florida Trail that was new to me, a piece in the Bronson State Forest that was in the process of being re-routed when we hiked in 2011. During our hike we had to road walk a large chunk of this section. So, after breakfast with some of the crew from Billy Goat Day at the Townhouse Restaurant, I met up with Sandra at the…
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Weekend at Lake Livingston
We kicked off February with a camping trip to Lake Livingston State Park. It is one of our closer camping locations and thus allows for easy access on weekends when we don’t feel like trekking across the state. In the past we’ve tried to take off work a bit early on Friday to make it a longish weekend at the campsite. We weren’t really able to leave that early this time and so when we arrived it was nearly dark. We would end up setting up the tent in the dark as well as making dinner in the dark. This was something we really couldn’t fathom doing a few years…
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A Hike at Split Oak Forest
As I mentioned a few posts ago, when I flew into Orlando I went for a hike over at Split Oak Forest WEA. After I made my flight plans a few months ago I knew I wanted to hike somewhere, probably on the Florida trail, and I had thought I’d likely hit up Tosohatchee WMA. But over the last few months I began seeing a lot more press about a potential toll road proposal going through the southern portion of Split Oak Forest. In late December, Osceola county commissioners ended up approving the toll road plans which was seriously disappointing to hear. Then, late last month a commissioner asked her…
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Billy Goat Day – A Quick Synopsis
Photo from Florida Hikes via Flickr – To find me, look for the dog in the lower left corner, then the guy in the yellow shirt, and then the grey and orange FT Thru-Hike shirt just to the right of that. It was a good crowd! Wow, what a weekend! I flew into Florida very early on Friday morning, landing at around 10:45am local time, stood in line for my rental car, and then jettisoned myself to the nearest Publix to get lunch. I’d started craving a Publix sub the night before but had been thinking about it for weeks. The particular Publix I found was very busy at the…
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Giant Swallowtail on Hercules’ Club | Wildlife Wednesday
Finding a caterpillar chrysalis in the wild can be quite the feat and is something you typically have to be looking for. Even in my own garden, when the monarchs or gulf fritillaries head off to pupate, unless they are front and center and attaching them to our front porch (gulf frits) or on plants nearby the milkweed (monarchs) we typically cannot find the chrysalides. Chris lucked out as he was tying extra ropes from the tent to a nearby tree in preparation for a storm that would hit during our Thanksgiving camping trip that was expected to have high wind—and found a chrysalis on the Hercules’ club (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis)…
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The Color of Autumn
Autumn in the south, or rather the deep south, doesn’t really start showing its true colors until November. We get tinges of it in September but usually at that point it is because of summer drought stress in the trees and the leaves begin going golden. October get a bit more of a pronouncement, especially if we get a cool front in the month, or like this year an early freeze at the end of the month. By November the colors start coming in and definitely by late Thanksgiving we’ve gone to what most people would consider ‘brown’. But if you look right, and especially if you get a rainy…
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On the Wings of an Elm
The winged elms, Ulmus alata, at Cooper Lake State Park back during our Thanksgiving camping trip were some of the wingiest winged elms I’ve ever seen! It was very tempting to want to break the little corky wings off but I resisted and just took in the interesting patterns of the wings and the coloration that the chilly, grey November day was giving to the wood. As you can see many of the wings were covered in lichen or moss, too, which made them even more interesting to view. I’ve tried finding more information about how the wings are developed in this plant but so many of the science articles…