The heat and humidity of our Florida summers can make very unfriendly companions during any outdoor activity. Proper precautions, such as plenty of sunscreen and water, need to be taken so that you avoid dehydration, sunburn, and heat exhaustion. We tried to keep all these things in mind when we set out for a Sunday hike, and I think we did pretty well!
We....Rob, myself, Olivia, Chris, Xandra, and Randy...got a decently early start. The goal was to hike a few trails, find a few geocaches, and then go tubing down a nearby river.
The trails were pretty shaded as the sun rose into the sky. The problem, however, were the trails themselves! We had gotten a map at the trailhead and ended up having a backtrack a few times. Unfortunately, the trails aren't marked exactly like they are on the map.
Still, it was a beautiful area for hiking:
Deer moss
Tar flowers
Pretty soon we had found a couple of geocaches:
And continued down the trails:
Those mushrooms look like eggs!
Robby made sure to look for his beach ball, but all he found were trees:
Chris climbed a tree. Okay, a fallen tree:
And tussled with Randy:
Gravity won that battle.
I love my kid! She posed in front of this pine sapling so we could see what she'd look like with crazy green hair.
But mostly we walked...
And walked...
Crawled under....
Climbed...
And observed the beauty of the nature surrounding us:
She was actually looking at this cleverly-camouflaged lizard:
Pretty soon we were back where we started, and it was finally time to rest and have some lunch.
While we were eating, one of the locals came out to visit:
I prefer tortoises over mosquitoes or ticks any day!!
And eventually, that was it. The river tubing run was filled to capacity, so we had to cut our day short. That's okay, though. You really don't have to do everything possible to get a fulfilling experience. It's a lesson I'm working on learning.
**No stamp? That's right! Wekiwa Springs was full, and Blue Spring doesn't have the stamp for this park anymore. So...we'll have to go back eventually to Wekiwa for our stamp!
We've had the same problem with trails in the Wekiva Preserve. At first, I thought I'd forgotten how to read blazes, but it was truly that the blazed trail and the map didn't match up. That's the first (and so far only) time I've had that happen on a Florida trail.
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