Closing The Gaps: 36 New Miles of Florida Trail

Last week I got to check off 36 new miles of Florida Trail that I had never seen before. They were separated into a 16 mile day and a 20 mile day. Both day’s were a very unique experience and adventure out on the trail.  

Let’s start with the 16 mile day…

The section I chose to check off was the last section closest to home (Jacksonville) that I had not yet stepped foot on. It was from State Road 100 (Lake Butler) to Olustee Battlefield. From studying the map on the FarOut app, I could tell that most of this was on forest service road bed, which I knew would be runnable but less exciting. I was okay with that and still so excited to check it out.

This was my first time utilizing a feature on the Uber app where you could reserve a ride days in advance. It seemed like a genius option to secure a ride in the middle of nowhere since calling an uber out there would be a long shot. So I made a reservation to get picked up at 7am at Olustee. This would mean that I could go northbound back to my car.

However, as things tend to happen, that did not go to plan. I showed up to the trailhead at 7am and no one was there. I had one bar of service and checked the app… “ No drivers available” … WTF I thought to myself. I did not realize that a driver had not confirmed the ride. Suddenly I was at a loss of what to do.

I stood there for about 15 minutes trying to wait for an uber driver to accept a new ride that I had requested. Nothing. So I decided to turn the day into a drive down some forest service roads, and go to SR 100 to try and get an uber from there to at least go southbound.

I drove around looking at some of the trail, then eventually made my way to where I had planned to get dropped off. The trail spits out onto a two lane highway and there really wasn’t anywhere to park except across the road at this local volunteer fire department. So I parked there and left a little note under the windshield, hoping that if anyone questioned my car being there that they would leave it alone until I got back.

I had better service here and was slightly closer to a city, so started to request an uber ride. At this point it was 8am and the day was only getting warmer. It took about five minutes but someone confirmed my pickup, hooray!!! It said they were 21 minutes away. No big deal, I can wait.

After a few minutes I noticed my drivers ETA started to go up slowly. All of a sudden it said they were now 35 minutes away. l checked on their location in the app and sure enough they were driving AWAY from me. So I decided to cancel the ride and request a new driver. After a few more minutes a new driver confirmed and it said they were 20 minutes away. “Fine, let’s do this again” I thought to myself. I REALLY wanted to go point to point to check off this section.

After about three minutes I noticed their ETA was not changing at all, so I checked their location and they were stationary in the same spot, which appeared to be a neighborhood. I assumed they were home and just had not p left yet. Either way, this wasted about another ten minutes before I canceled that ride on Uber.

After extreme frustration, I decided to give Uber one more chance to redeem itself. I sent out a final request for a ride and then FINALLY someone accpted it and they were actually driving toward me to pick me up!! It was another 20 minute wait but I was so happy.

My Uber driver arrived without any issues and was able to drop me off at Olustee where I would run/ walk going southbound. I did not get started on my run until 9:30 am, which was about two hours later than I had planned to start my run.

At that point it had warmed up a lot and the sun was out in full force. I started my frolic on the first few miles of trail before crossing a major road to do a bunch more run/walking on forest roads. I went through a couple huge banana spider webs, which were terrifying, and got my feet wet almost immediately with muck and mud.

I got into the groove of a run/walk interval. At the top of every mile I would jog for about 4/10 of a mile, then walk the rest of the mile. This averaged my pace to about a 12-13 minute mile. Some miles I walked more than others.

The road beds were easy and very peaceful. I did not see a single other person or car for the entire day which was nice. Once the road beds turned into trail though, it turned into a crazy bush wack for the rest of the journey, going through razorblade grass, briars and bushes. The sun got stronger and stronger and I ended up drinking through all of my water which was a hard lesson learned. I did NOT carry enough water this day which made the final three miles extremely challenging.

Above photographed was a section of the "trail"

However I made it through back to my car by 1pm and was so happy to be done! All in all, it was still an enjoyable day minus getting my legs chewed up by the unmaintained trail. (It IS early October after all and the trail maintenance season has just started )

The 20 mile day…

I drove down near sanford to run/ walk the Florida Trail from bear pond to clearwater lake. I learned that clearwater lake was the very first section that the Florida Trail was built on!

I decided to give Uber another chance at the ride reservation, knowing that this area was close enough to orlando to likely have more Uber drivers all over the place and accept the ride. I made a reservation and it already confirmed the night before that I had a driver assigned to me, hooray!

I woke up at 4:30 and left at about 5 am to get going down there, it was a two hour drive and was about to be a long day.

I got to the trailhead where I was leaving my car and had no issues with the Uber pick up. They got me right on time and took me down to bear pond where I would start my journey for the day.

This time I prepared a little better for a longer day. I had packed more calories as well as more water. I decided to carry 3 liters of water and also decided to freeze all of it solid the night before, knowing that it would thaw over the first two hours and I would have cold water for a short period at least!

The first few miles leaving bear pond were pretty well maintained and minus dodging some spiderwebs, it was pleasant!

This morning was extremely humid and I already had started to sweat pretty early on. Thankfully one of my frozen bottles had electrolytes in it, which I started to sip on. 

For this training run I decided that instead of doing a run/walk interval like I had the other day, that I would just jog the first ten miles and then walk the last ten miles back to my car. Not sure why but I enjoyed this much more for some reason.

More spiders, eeeek!!!

I took photos at almost every mile. Some of this section went on road bed but most of it was on trail. I only had to cross two major roads. I absolutely loved doing this section!! I saw two snakes while doing this section. A rat snake in the middle of the trail ( Which I quite literally almost stepped on by a few inches) and an eastern indigo snake I think. It was not a black racer because it was not slithering away from me fast. I jumped over it and quickly kept going and forgot to take a picture. But it was a beautiful snake!! 

Black bear print in the sandy roadbed! Sadly there were no black bear sightings though.

Non venomous rat snake

Florida cactus garden!

At mile 10 of the run, roughly halfway, I decided to put socks on because I felt a hot spot forming on one of my feet. I found a lovely road bed to sit my butt on !

Met a very kind trail angel who built a small shelter along his property where the Florida trail crossed. He offered me cold water and snacks but I turned him down since I had plenty on me.

The Florida scrub!

I got back to my car with no trouble, but little did I know the craziness I was about to endure..

While driving I noticed a small tick on  me. No big deal, I had a couple ticks from the other day and it wasn’t a big issue. Just shower really well and check everywhere and remove them as needed. But the ticks that I was finding was a much worse infestation than I had though.

One tick turned into two, then three, then ten. They were those little seed ticks that are smaller than the point of a pen. I could barely see them much less feel them!! Plus with my freckles they blended right in.

I got home and took a shower, scrubbing extremely hard and all over. As I got out of the shower and was drying off, I still kept finding some little ticks, and some of the small seed ones were latched!!

I decided this time that the regular soap was not enough. Thankfully I had a flea and tick dog shampoo under the bathroom sink, I decided to use this as a body wash and scrub the ever living crap out of myself with it to get rid of the last of them. That seemed to do the trick, minus the three that I had found latched which I removed myself.

I thought I had solved the problem and all was well, but little did I know that I had also gone through CHIGGERS!!

Yes chiggers. If you aren’t familiar with them, they also like to live on grass, in spanish moss or on pine needle forest beds. They’re teeny tiny little red bugs that like to burrow inside your socks and in little crevices like behind your knees and all over your legs. I had over 100 chigger bites around my ankles where my crew socks had been. 

One thing to know about chigger bites is that they are probably the itchiest and most painful bug bite you can deal with. I went through about three sleepless nights where I kept waking up to itching, no matter how much calamine I applied to myself. It was BRUTAL!

Those fuckers were the worst case of chiggers I had ever experienced, and I can now say with confidence that I will not be going back in that area of the florida trail until after the first freeze.

HA!!! That was quite a write up and interesting two days of Florida Trail. But this IS Florida where we are abundant in all kinds of insects and wildlife. It’s always an adventure and I will always love it every single time.