I was very excited starting off on what we thought was a 9 mile loop. This would be perfect as we have to dinner/game night engagement with some friends. We'd head down to the river and be done by 12-1pm. The scenery is beautiful as you can see.
We had parked in area 2, and decided to take the spur to the Pond Trail which then connected to the Challenge Trail. Early indication is that everything would be well marked.
I even got more excited when I realized we'd be hiking in real woods with a canopy. Those that have followed previous blogs know I don't care for hiking through miles of palmettos and sand.
Once we had come to the area where you could either complete the Pond Trail or continue onto the Challenge Trail, we soon realized why it has this name!
I was perplexed as this was the actual trail. Obviously it is not maintained or has much foot traffic.
Clif is standing directly in front of the trail marker (we were on the white blaze trail that is a 9 mile loop).
There he goes, so I will follow even though I am weary. I couldn't stop for any pictures along the rest of this portion as I needed both supports of the hiking sticks to bushwhack my way through. :)
Clif was able to get some pictures though with his camera as I made my way through.
This was one of the areas where we collected the most ticks. We would stop at each small clearing and swipe them off our clothes. We were thankful that we wore long sleeved shirts and pants.
We finally come to an area that recently had a fire. I think it was one back this past Feb.
Anyway, there was no end in sight as to how far we'd be hiking after all, does this look like there is a river nearby???
But once to the other side, (about 2 miles or so) and trying to acclimate our position to the map, we were back to bushwhacking our way through. Our goal was to get to the Rock Springs Run which is a popular canoeing river that ties into Wekiva Springs Run. We had a hard time identifying the trail blazes. Clif would go ahead as I talked to him, and once he found a blaze, he'd yell for me to catch up.
We finally made it. Across from where we came out at the river's edge is where we hiked a couple months ago at Wekiva Springs. I had blogged about Big Buck Camp in January where we hiked a 10 mile loop.
Continuing on the loop, I was now getting very frustrated. It was already 1:00, and we had already hiked 10 + miles. It was clear that the map or the trails weren't accurate. It is advised, "stay on the marked trail to avoid getting lost". Well, that's all fine and dandy if you knew where you were on the map in relation to the trail blazes you were following!!! None of these roads were on our map.
How's this for ya?!
I snapped this shot when we got back to the truck at 3:00pm and 14 miles later! Old Road 433 is where our truck is parked about 1 1/2 miles to the north of the Lake/Orange County line. I'm just glad we finally made it back. I was exhausted.
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