Last week, my buddy Bob and I hit the Florida Trail to knock off another segment in the Ocala National Forest — this time, Hopkins Prairie. My first visit here was with Deb Blick, cartographer and data collector extraordinare of the Florida Trail Association, and it was a walk at a data collector’s pace. On […]
Archives for February 2009
Changes at Buckman Lock
Back in November, when I gave a presentation at the Wilderness Trekkers Annual Conference, I’d heard from the Cross Florida Greenway manager that the visitor center at Buckman Lock was closed due to budget cuts. It sounded like it would reopen at some point. On a visit to Buckman Lock last Friday, I learned that […]
Great Florida Birding Trail complete in Florida’s Panhandle
With the final signs up and brochures circulated, the Great Florida Birding Trail’s Panhandle Section is finally complete. It points you to places of special beauty, and many of them are hiking trails on which birding is superb, including some of my personal favorite. Here’s where hiking and birding intersect in Escambia and Santa Rosa […]
Hiking near Zolfo Springs?
I just heard from my friends Bill and Ginny, who are planning a trip up to Zolfo Springs. For those of you who have no idea where this is, it’s a quiet place in the middle of South Central Florida, about an hour east of Bradenton and a half hour north of Arcadia, in Hardee […]
I Did I-Did-A-Hike
It’s been more than a week since my sweet soujourn along the Suwannee River, but how I savored a morning’s walk on the Florida Trail past geological wonders I’d never before seen from this perspective. The Florida Trail Association’s North Florida Trailblazers chapter, and Alton Snellgrove in particular, have been working hard on establishing the […]
Miami Hikes?
Response to a reader question on trails within a half-hour of Aventura: My wife and I love to walk and hike. What trails would you recommend?
MyTopo!
In preparation for launching a new version of the Florida Hikes website, I’ve been gathering my many years of accumulated resources together in one place. I puzzled mightily over how I could have so few GPS tracks in my files, since I knew I’d recorded them…heck, I have photos of me carrying a GPS and […]
Suggested hikes around Pasco County
I received an email yesterday from Bonnie, a reader who’s visiting the Port Richey area soon. She asks: I’ll have a few days to do some hiking – perhaps a 2 -3 day backpack trip – something within a 50 mile radius of the Port Richey area preferably…So – which one of your books would […]
Take a hike, leave a (virtual) trace?
Yesterday, Google launched a product that will make some hikers leap for joy and others wince. We go to the woods to get away from it all, right? At least some of us do. Well, with the new My Tracks application for Android-powered cell phones (like the T-Mobile G1), you can beam a real-time track […]