Seminole Ranch

Today Clif and I decided to hike the Seminole Ranch.  I thought it would have been in Seminole County, but actually, it is in East Orange County near the St. John's River, directly across from the Orlando Wetlands Park.  We were out on the trail by 10am and back by 1.  It was an interesting morning.





I decided to take a picture of the map and trail system in case we had issues like we did last month at The Rock Springs Preserve.  Needless to say, this map wasn't accurate AT ALL.  I was grateful that Clif had his handy GPS device because this is what kept us on the right track.  In retrospect, after having him download what we walked, we started at the You are Here, went slightly to the east, then due south.  The link that is not marked is from the bottom of the lake to the west that hooks back into the trail that is just to the west of what we walked and dead ends in the hikers note.



The parking area is right next to the pasture land.  I don't know why it didn't register in my mind that because this is the SEMINOLE RANCH, this would be a clue as to what adventure we were about to embark on!



Hazard number one...cow pies.  Forget trying to pay attention to the blazes on the trees, you were too busy watching where you were stepping!




On the trail, we were privileged to see up close and personal the calf feeding.  Mom was pretty docile which surprised us.  And no, I wasn't actually this close to the cow.  I used my zoom lens. :)  I was about 50 yards back.



Clif said he was checking for ticks.  I think he was inspecting a cow pie.



Once we went just over a 1/2 mile or so, we realized we had to scale the fence.  I'm glad the ranchman made it easy for us.


 Now it was time to get out of cow country and into the real Florida.



They had many interesting bridges to cross.



They had a camping area.  This is where we decided to eat lunch.  It was nice it had a covered pavilion as it had been spritzing for the previous 1/2 hour.  I was glad I had my compact umbrella.  It was much too humid and muggy to where a rain poncho, and I was already sweating like mad.




Before long, we came to a clearing in which we could see HWY 50 off in the distance.  The fenced area is the Christmas RV Park that you see on your way to/from the coast.



We hiked around the lake.  Part of which bordered The South Pasture Trail.  Hmmm, another clue as to what we would be getting ourselves into.


This is the area where the trail is not marked.  How do you mark pasture land?  When the cows saw us, the entire herd took off running  away from us much to our relief.  Clif having an orange shirt, and I having a red camelback could have been enticing for the bulls to charge us.  We relied on Clif's GPS to navigate us through this grassy acreage.



The herd is watching us vigilantly.  They had about 7 calves they were protecting.



Through another gate, and another herd watched as we passed by.  This herd just stared and didn't stampede away like the others.  After hugging the tree line, we were able to pass through the final gate and follow the dirt road back to the platform that helped us scale the fence.  We walked a total of 5.78 miles on this loop trail.