Having noted that my little newsflash on Florida Hikes! bumped up to the top of Google for the Trek Ten Trails program, I thought I should do the community a service by providing information about the hiking trails that are a part of this new Polk County Friends of the Parks program. It’s meant to get people outdoors, and according to Tom Palmer of the Lakeland Ledger, did they ever! Said he:

Organizers estimated the turnout at 1,000. Not bad for a morning when it looked like rain.

Indeed! I’d thought of attending, but the skies over Ocala didn’t impress me enough for an early morning drive down to Polk County. The program, however, is off to a great start. The idea is to get residents and visitors to hike 10 trails throughout the county, some paved, some natural, with fun prizes and games involved. Using a Nature Passport, you keep track of where you hike. You can hike them yourself, or on these group hikes scheduled over the next year. The links lead to my information on these trails. Also, you can read the aggregated information on my first issue of the Florida Hikes! online magazine.

Oct 6:  Fort Fraser Trail (paved), Bartow to Lakeland  
Nov 10: Lakeland Highlands Scrub, Lakeland
Dec 8:  Hickory Lake Scrub, Frostproof
Jan 13:  Crooked Lake Prairie, Babson Park
Feb 10:  SUMICA, east of Lake Wales
Mar 8:  Gator Creek Reserve, Lakeland
Apr 5:  Saddle Creek Nature Trail, Lakeland
May 3: Lake Wales Trailway (paved), Lake Wales
Jun 7: Lake Hollingsworth, Lakeland (paved)
Sep 13: Auburndale TECO trail (paved), Auburndale

See more details at the Friends of the Parks website.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Central, 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.