If you love Florida’s outdoors as much as I do, you’ll want to make tracks to Florida’s only real hiking festival, the annual Florida Trail Conference. Like last year, this year’s long weekend is at the Florida Elks Youth Camp, a rambling ranch sitting on the county line in Umatilla, Florida. Things kick off on Friday March 16 with workshops and guided walks and a slide show by my co-author and buddy Johnny Molloy on his Florida Trail thru-hike last year. Saturday, there are more than 20 activities and workshops to choose from, from Nature Photography to Beginning Birding. There will be quite a few authors besides myself and we’ll all sign books around lunchtime, for those of you who collect hiking books (and we thank you that you do!).

Why mention it now? If you register before March 1, it only costs $15 for the weekend (kids under 12 are free, and there will be plenty for them to do). Meals must be ordered by March 1 and cost $35 for the full package (catered by local restaurants that I can vouch for being worthy of my travel guides). Or you can bring your own camp food. Tent camping is $2 per night per person, or bunkhouse for $20 per night. Hope to see you there … stop in at the “Orange Blaze Mercantile” to pick up a signed copy of my travel guides and hiking guides! Register online now, or learn more at this link.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.