The Florida Trail

The Florida Trail is a 1,400 mile foot path traversing Florida from the Everglades to the Panhandle. We decided to hike just a small portion of the Suwannee River section of the trail, the part that runs through the Stephen Foster Culture Center State Park. We got an early start this morning and drove to the Nature and Heritage Tourism Center to park and begin our adventure.

The trail runs past the Tourism Center and enters the park. It runs mainly along the Suwannee River.

The trail runs through several different ecosystems, some wet and marshy and low growing and others opening up into groves of trees. We were often surrounded by saw palmettos and large oak trees draped in Spanish moss.

The trail is marked by orange blazes at regular intervals. At only a few points did we have to cast about to see the next blaze.

We really enjoyed the views of the river as we walked along, but being next to a river has its potential difficulties and dangers too. The water level in the river was at 62.89'. A sign indicates that when the level is 60' or below, the trail can be expected to be dry. You can see the problem. We came across areas where the Florida Trail was underwater, and we had to detour around the flooded areas. One detour just kept leading us farther and farther from the river, but we were somewhat reassured at signs that other people had been here before us (e.g. beer cans). We were also very glad to have our trusty GPS and a trail map from the park.

We found some picnic tables at a remote river overlook and stopped to eat an early lunch (hiking makes us hungry!). We decided to abandon the Florida Trail and return to the Tourism Center via one of the other trails that led more directly back. We didn't want to try to find our way around the large flooded area again. Unfortunately the first way we tried (the Camp Road) was blocked by extensive flooding. We turned back and took a shortcut across to the River Road Trail. We ran into some flooding along it also, but not too difficult to outflank.

When we got back to our truck, we were most grateful for the air conditioning! We had a great hike, but we were ready to rest up a bit and cool down.



We were invited to a park-wide barbecue. One of the residents put on a steak dinner for everyone to celebrate his wife's 55th birthday. We wanted to be sociable, so we attended even though steak isn't our favorite. Everyone here is very friendly and outgoing. The celebration was fun, even the off key singing of "Happy Birthday," but we left soon after the cake because too many people were starting to smoke, and I was really choked up.